Home / server / Questions / 21579
In Process
sludge
Asked: 2009-06-08 10:35:46 +0800 CST

Terminal.app does not support alt/meta/command-key modifiers such as meta-backspace

  • 772

This was observed on Mac OS X 10.5, running Terminal.app. On a native Linux machine, from a bash command prompt, typing meta-backspace deletes up until the most recent whitespace. On a Mac, it sounds the system bell.

SSHing into a Linux machine with Terminal.app as the terminal causes the same problem.

This behavior is consistent with the third party application iTerm. However, the Windows program PuTTy handles meta-backspace (and other meta commands) as expected.

mac-osx terminal putty

2 Answers

  1. The real solution to this problem is to use option as meta in the Terminal.app preferences and Emacs. In Emacs 23, I do:

    (setq mac-option-modifier 'meta)

    to use option as meta. Hope this helps.

    • 3

  2. You might consider using iTerm (iterm.sf.net) instead of Terminal.app... I find it's much more feature-complete than Terminal.app.

    • -1