Tip 1220 Printable Monobook Previous Next created May 2, 2006 · complexity basic · version 5.7

Many Unix shells (bash, zsh, etc.) come with keyboard shortcuts enabled: C-a jumps to the start of the line, C-e jumps to the end, and so on. However, these are taken from Emacs. It's possible to tell your shell to use Vi shortcuts instead. Not only will the keybindings match what you're used to, but you'll also have modal editing, just like Vi.

To enable Vi-mode, edit (or create) the file ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc and add the following lines:

set editing-mode vi set keymap vi-command

Restart your terminal and you'll have Vi keybindings. By default, you're in insert mode; press Esc to enter command mode. You may want to keep a cheat sheet of default keymappings handy, since they do differ from Vi/Vim occasionally.

In bash, to see a list of the keymappings currently active, use the command bind -p | grep -v '^#\|self-insert\|^$' . Important: the displayed keybindings will change depending on whether you're in insert or command mode when you execute the command. It is recommended that you run the command once with insert mode active, and once when command mode is active.

A reference to adjusting the options and mappings of the readline library most shells use for text editing can be found in the readline man page, or in the GNU bash man page.

When customizing your Vi-style kemappings, be mindful of which editing mode your keymap applies to. In your ~/.inputrc, a line with set keymap vi-command means that mappings below that line apply to command mode; a line with set keymap vi-insert means that mappings below that line apply to insert mode. See a sample .inputrc for an example of this.

My own personal ~/.inputrc, with comments on every line, can be used as an example of customizing your own shell.

# Use Vi, not Emacs, style editing set editing-mode vi # Show all completions as soon as I press tab, even if there's more than one set show-all-if-ambiguous on # Ignore case set completion-ignore-case on # on menu-complete, first display the common prefix, then cycle through the # options when hitting TAB set menu-complete-display-prefix on ########################################################### # Keymaps for when we're in command mode (e.g., after hitting ESC) set keymap vi-command # Insert the arguments from the last command "p": "i !!*\r" # When hitting option-up/option-down, cycle through the previous commands # which start with the prefix you've entered, rather than just cycling through # the last entered commands. # In OS X's Terminal.app preferences, I have 'Use option as meta key' off, and # have mapped "option cursor up" to "\033\033[A" and "option cursor down" to # "\033\033[B". # Feel free to bind to whatever you want. Delete the first '\e' in the keymap # to set plain up/down to do a history search by default. "\e\e[A": history-search-backward "\e\e[B": history-search-forward ########################################################### # Keymaps for when we're in insert (i.e., typing stuff in) mode set keymap vi-insert # Pressing tab will list all completions & select the first one. Pressing it # again will cycle through available completions. TAB: menu-complete # Shift-TAB cycles completions backward "\e[Z": menu-complete-backward # Option-up/option-down should also apply to insert mode "\e\e[A": history-search-backward "\e\e[B": history-search-forward # Needed because binding 'p' in command mode above wipes its insert mode # function, too. This fixes that, and will insert 'p' when you type 'p'. "p": self-insert

--Magicmat (talk) 07:53, June 14, 2013 (UTC)







Some more interesting keys from my ~/.inputrc (works in cygwin/linux bash).

# Edit options before rerunning previous command, eg: ls a b c -> ls -al a b c "\e-": "\C-p\C-a\M-f " # Cycle thru completions. "\e/": menu-complete # glob patterns without executing, eg: 'rm *x' "\ee": glob-expand-word # Vim style history search "\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward "\e[C": forward-char "\e[D": backward-char # Two escapes clear command line. "\e\e": "\C-a\C-k"

If you use zsh (and you really should!) you can add to your .zshrc:

bindkey -v

to set editing mode to vi. I think this is useful because zsh does not use readline like bash etc do.

I'm sure all bash users will be familiar with:

set -o vi

Ought to be noted that you can do the same with the Korn Shell (ksh). For automatic vi keystrokes, edit $HOME/.profile or whatever your $HOME/$ENV script is.

Quick clarification for ksh -- that's "set -o vi" you need to add to .profile or $ENV script.

To summarize: As I understand, setting file ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc will set Vi mode to all programs that use 'readline' library. From what i know it's bash, pgsql, mysql, ... + I like to use Term::ReadLine module in perl and therefore Vi mode works right a way for all of my programs. Setting up 'set -o vi' in ~/.bashrc will set it only for bash (the same goes for ksh and zsh setting i guess).

The problem is that the bindings do not work with vi-mode. Had to change the sequences to VI sequences:

set editing-mode vi set keymap vi-insert # Edit options before rerunning previous command, eg: ls a b c -> ls -al a b c "\C-o": "\e-0eli " # Cycle thru completions. "\C-a": menu-complete # glob patterns without executing, eg: 'rm *x' "\C-e": glob-expand-word # Vim style history search (Already Default) #"\e[A": history-search-backward #"\e[B": history-search-forward #"\e[C": forward-char #"\e[D": backward-char # Two escapes clear command line. (Use C-c or \eC\eC instead) "\e\e": "\e0\C-ki"

bindkey -v

Is also the method for tcsh.