Re: why doesn't ~/.inputrc work

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi> writes:

> * 2011-10-15T07:50:42-05:00 * Harry Putnam wrote:
>
>> Since installing debian recently I've never seen my old ~/.inputrc
>> file be honored.
>
> Perhaps the content of your .inputrc is not quite valid anymore? I
> remember having required to make some changes in the past.

Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:


>> Perhaps the content of your .inputrc is not quite valid anymore? I
>> remember having required to make some changes in the past.
>
> That's a very good advice.
>
> I would also try to put the content of the current "~/.inputrc" into the 
> system wide file located under "/etc/inputrc". If that neither works, it 
> would reinforce the problem on the formatting or invalid content of the 
> file.

Not too long ago, just wks, .inputrc worked on another system.  That
was also recent bash.  

When its working you can reread it with C-x C-r and fiddle around with
it trying stuff as much as want.  

Here I get no response no matter what.

I reduced ~/.inputrc to 1 line:

cat ~/.inputrc

  "\M-a": "awk 'BEGIN{ print ( )}'"

When Alt-a is pressed that should put an awk command onto the cmdline
like so:

    awk 'BEGIN{ print ( )}'

But it does nothing at all.  

Can anyone verify that the syntax of that line is correct by
inserting that line in their ~/.inputrc.  Run C-x C-r to reread
~/.inputrc, then try pressing `Alt-a' and see if an awk command is
inserted into your command line.

I also tried Camaleón's idea and put it in /etc/inputrc.. again no
response. 

However, checking the man page, I tried an example from their.

Control-o: "> output"

And that works fine so apparently it is some problem over the meta or
Alt characters.. I tried using the `windows' key, which is sometimes
called `meta' but again no go.

So you both were apparently right about it being syntax related but
how can I get to bottom of it? 

Buzzing thru man readline, I didn't notice an example that clearly
says how to designate the ALT key.  Anyone using entries in ~/.inputrc
that rely on the `ALT' key, and can show an example of how it is
designated?