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kbosak
Asked: 2010-04-08 06:36:00 +0800 CST

Using ctrl-arrow keys with PuTTY and screen

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I searched and couldn't find a solution for this anywhere. I'm using PuTTY from Windows to connect to various servers where I run bash and screen. It seems bash works fine with ctrl-arrow keys to jump word-to-word on the command line but within screen it's not working. Not in screen, ctrl-left sends "^[OC and ctrl-right is "^[OD". Within screen I instead get "^[[C" and "^[[D", which appears to be the codes for just the left/right arrow keys. Is there any way to get screen to recognize ctrl-arrow keys when using PuTTY? (FYI, I don't remember having this problem when using gnu-terminal in linux instead of PuTTY).

UPDATE: It appears PuTTY is the problem as it is not sending the escape codes that are necessary for this to work. I'm giving up for now and using Cygwin+mintty.

bash gnu-screen putty

9 Answers

  1. As mentioned in here, u can put in ~/.inputrc:

    "\eOD": backward-word
"\eOC": forward-word

    It worked for me.

    • 31
  2. Best Answer

    Edit:

    Here's what worked for me:

    • My ~/.bashrc sets TERM=xterm (mine happens to be TERM=xterm-256colors) overriding screen's TERM=screen
    • I set PuTTY > Terminal > Features > Disable Application cursor keys mode to checked
    • I enter tput smkx at the Bash prompt

    • Now Ctrl-Arrow keys jump word-by-word

    • For informational purposes, if I do:
      tput smkx | hexdump -c
      I get
      0000000 033 [ ? 1 h 033 =
      and
      tput rmkx | hexdump -c
      gives me
      0000000 033 [ ? 1 l 033 >

    I think there's a way to rework this into something a little better, but it's what I've got so far and it seems to work.

    Original answer:

    From info screen:

    Each window in a `screen' session emulates a VT100 terminal, with some extra functions added. The VT100 emulator is hard-coded, no other terminal types can be emulated.

    And VT100s don't have Ctrl-Arrow keycodes.

    • 14

  3. I'm somewhat surprised that you got Putty to send ctrl-arrowkeys correctly even without using screen, as that has never worked for me. My solution was to switch to using alt-arrowkeys (meta-arrowkeys), which I believe have the same forward-word / backward-word binding in bash by default, though I had to issue a couple extra commands for zsh to recognize them:

    bindkey "^[^[[C" forward-word      # Meta-RightArrow
bindkey "^[^[[D" backward-word     # Meta-LeftArrow
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  4. In case others find this old question like I did, a more recent solution:

    Ctrl and arrow keys doesn't work in putty! What do I do?

    putty inverts the sense of the cursor key mode on ctrl, which is a bit hard for tmux to detect properly. To get ctrl keys right, change the terminfo settings so kUP5 (Ctrl-Up etc) are the adjusted versions, and disable smkx/rmkx so tmux doesn't change the mode. For example with this line in .tmux.conf (assuming you have TERM set to xterm):

    set -g terminal-overrides "xterm*:kLFT5=\eOD:kRIT5=\eOC:kUP5=\eOA:kDN5=\eOB:smkx@:rmkx@"

    Note that this will only work in tmux 1.2 and above.

    http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/project/bsd/src/tmux-1.3/FAQ

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  5. I'm using the Terminal > Keyboard > Function Keys > Xterm R6 That helps with htop (f4 search etc ) function keys working as expected.

    What I've found out is that, instead of using CTRL + arrow, ALT + arrow jumps words instead.

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  6. I just experienced the opposite! For me, ctrl-left and ctrl-right did not have the desired effects in the command line, but they still worked in screen (and emacs). I think it has to do with the way your program inputs special characters. (I use MobaXterm now.)

    My fix was simply adding these two lines to the .inputrc file:

    ";5D": backward-word
";5C": forward-word

    (The ;5C and ;5D were what appeared in the command line when I used them before this fix.)

    • 1

  7. You should look into the documentation of terminfo, ncurses, screen and putty if you want to debug/configure properly. Also bash shortcuts can be configured with inputrc. Look into the man pages of bash and search for inputrc.

    • 0

  8. Do you have the right character encoding in Putty ? If you connect to a server in UTF-8 and your putty is in standard charset, in vim, the arrow keys are written. If Putty is in UTF-8, you can move your cursor. Maybe it is the same in your case...

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  9. In your putty configuration under Terminal -> Features, there's a few "disable" checkboxes. You may want to try disabling application cursor keys or application keypad mode -- sometimes putty tries to be "too smart" and sends control characters that aren't compatible with the server.

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