MacOS – Terminal problem with Ctrl + Arrow and Shift + Arrow keys

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I am running Mavericks on a new Macbook Pro. When I use the Ctrl and Shift keys together with the arrow keys, I get some sort of key codes as output in the terminal. I am pretty sure that this problem is new and that it didn't happen a few days ago. But I am not 100% sure. Anyway, this is what happens:

If I press Ctrl+← (Left arrow), ;5D is output in the terminal. Similarly:

Ctrl+→ (Right arrow) outputs ;5C
Shift+← (Left arrow) outputs ;2D
Shift+→ (Right arrow) outputs ;2C

As I mentioned, I am pretty sure that before today I could use those shortcuts to move between words and select text. Has anyone seen this before? I have already looked through some of the existing questions about arrow key shortcuts, but I have found no references to this exact problem.

Also, note that I have turned off the keyboard shortcut that moves between desktops using the Ctrl + arrow keys.

Best Answer

The same thing happens on my 10.9 and 10.8 VMs. Control-arrows and shift-arrows don't do anything by default in bash. Where were you even using shift-arrows to select text? emacs or vim?

If you want to use control-left and control-right to move between words in bash, add these lines to ~/.inputrc:

"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word

To use shift-arrows in Emacs, map shift-up to \e[1;2A, shift-down to \e[1;2B, shift-right to \e[1;2C, and shift-left to \e[1;2D. If pressing shift-up results in a message like <select> is undefined, try setting TERM to xterm-vt220.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Change Ctrl+Arrow and Ctrl+Shift+Arrow to jump/jump+select a single word rather than the whole line

Create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
  "^\UF702" = moveWordLeft:;
  "^\UF703" = moveWordRight:;
  "^$\UF702" = moveWordLeftAndModifySelection:;
  "^$\UF703" = moveWordRightAndModifySelection:;
}

Then quit and reopen applications to apply the changes.

See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html or http://lri.me/keybindings.html for more information.

Shift key on mac keyboard only works with some keys

Given the problem appears on two Macs, this suggests a hardware fault. If the keyboard is not too old, take it to an Apple Store. They may be able to replace it for you.

The strange behaviour you are seeing could be because a circuit is damaged and causing ghosting. Microsoft's article on ghosting explains more:

What causes ghosting?

Typically, ghosting is the result of one or more of following three limitations: the hardware can't read the given key combination, the software on the computer doesn't support multiple simultaneous keys, or the communication protocol between the hardware and software limits the maximum number of simultaneous keys reported. The next section discusses in more detail the hardware design of typical keyboards that limits the number of keys that can be read at the same time.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Change Ctrl+Arrow and Ctrl+Shift+Arrow to jump/jump+select a single word rather than the whole line

Shift key on mac keyboard only works with some keys

What causes ghosting?

Related Question