Re: [Help-bash] How to make vi-insert mode's ctrl-w work in the 4.3 way?

[Clark Wang]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:32 PM, Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:

On 11/4/16 6:30 AM, Clark Wang wrote:
> For example, if I have inputted the following after the prompt:
>
> # foo "abc"
>
> In bash 4.3's vi-insert mode, when I press ctrl-w it'll delete the whole
> "abc" (including quotes). But with 4.4 I have to press ctrl-w for 3 times
> (one for the right " char, one for abc and one for the left " char).

This was changed due to a bug report about readline not being Posix-
conformat with its ^W binding in vi insert mode.  Posix specifies that
word boundaries include whitespace and punctuation.  Apparently vi is
the same, but I'm not enough of a vi user to say.

The old binding (unix-word-rubout) is still there, but to avoid it being
overwritten, you need to set the readline variable `bind-tty-special-chars'
to `off'.  (Since ^W is your default stty werase character, readline will
bind it to its vi-mode equivalent when that variable is enabled.)

This works great. Thanks Chet.

You would have noticed the ^W binding being overwritten if you had done
a `bind -m vi-insert -p' after one of your key binding commands, but I
suppose there isn't any real reason to do that.

Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/