Getting ;5D when hitting ctrl + arrow key in a Terminal on FreeBSD

Question

On centos I can skip a word by hitting ctrl + arrow (left or right) in a terminal. When I ssh into a FreeBSD box and I try the same pattern I get:

$ tail -f 20120412.log;5D;5D;5D

(each try = ;5D)

Is there a way to fix this? I am using Ubuntu 12.04 + Terminator.

Thanks in advance.

score 42 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 05 '14 at 19:24

42

A .inputrc in your home directory will cause ctrl+left to stop working on Ubuntu (for example).

To get everything working, add the following to ~/.inputrc:

# Include system-wide inputrc, which is ignored by default when
# a user has their own .inputrc file.
$include /etc/inputrc

edited Nov 05 '14 at 19:24

CoolOppo

103

answered Jan 04 '13 at 07:56

f.kowal

537

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 08 '12 at 05:22

If You use ZSH, then use this at /etc/zshrc file.

case "${TERM}" in
  cons25*|linux) # plain BSD/Linux console
    bindkey '\e[H'    beginning-of-line   # home 
    bindkey '\e[F'    end-of-line         # end  
    bindkey '\e[5~'   delete-char         # delete
    bindkey '[D'      emacs-backward-word # esc left
    bindkey '[C'      emacs-forward-word  # esc right
    ;;
  *rxvt*) # rxvt derivatives
    bindkey '\e[3~'   delete-char         # delete
    bindkey '\eOc'    forward-word        # ctrl right
    bindkey '\eOd'    backward-word       # ctrl left
    # workaround for screen + urxvt
    bindkey '\e[7~'   beginning-of-line   # home
    bindkey '\e[8~'   end-of-line         # end
    bindkey '^[[1~'   beginning-of-line   # home
    bindkey '^[[4~'   end-of-line         # end
    ;;
  *xterm*) # xterm derivatives
    bindkey '\e[H'    beginning-of-line   # home
    bindkey '\e[F'    end-of-line         # end
    bindkey '\e[3~'   delete-char         # delete
    bindkey '\e[1;5C' forward-word        # ctrl right
    bindkey '\e[1;5D' backward-word       # ctrl left
    # workaround for screen + xterm
    bindkey '\e[1~'   beginning-of-line   # home
    bindkey '\e[4~'   end-of-line         # end
    ;;
  screen)
    bindkey '^[[1~'   beginning-of-line   # home
    bindkey '^[[4~'   end-of-line         # end
    bindkey '\e[3~'   delete-char         # delete
    bindkey '\eOc'    forward-word        # ctrl right
    bindkey '\eOd'    backward-word       # ctrl left
    bindkey '^[[1;5C' forward-word        # ctrl right
    bindkey '^[[1;5D' backward-word       # ctrl left
    ;;
esac

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 04 '25 at 18:20

For Ctrl+← and Ctrl+→⃪⃪ with sh(1) in FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE and greater, it seems that the two key combinations:

do work remotely (ssh)
do not yet work locally (at the computer).

Two commits for the enhancement – two files in the src tree:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/#userland-config began:

The default shell for the root user is now sh(1), which has many new features for interactive use. d410b585b6f0

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 11 '18 at 13:34

0

Looks like you might have the wrong $TERM setting. echo $TERM to find out what your current setting is. Might want to use xterm export TERM=xterm-256color.

edited Feb 11 '18 at 13:34

kasperd

31,086

answered May 07 '12 at 22:43

aaron kaufman

1

score -2 · Answer 5 · answered May 08 '12 at 00:29

-2

The shell you're running on the FreeBSD machine probably doesn't support that control sequence. Without knowing what shell you're running on either end, though, it's hard to say for sure.

answered May 08 '12 at 00:29

wfaulk

6,986

Getting ;5D when hitting ctrl + arrow key in a Terminal on FreeBSD

5 Answers5