Ipython key bindings documented

ipythonkeyboard shortcuts

I'm mostly loving ipython, but exasperated by my efforts to find any documentation for keyboard shortcuts. I can arrow/scroll through my command history, I can use ctrl r to search my history, a la bash, but other bash/readline commands alt D to delete a word or ctrl k to delete a line don't work. I've seen plenty of questions that seem to be about keyboard shortcuts and key bindings, but not a lot of answers.

iPython in Terminal.app: multi-line editing

I'd settle for unindent help right now — ipython does a nice job of indenting for you when you start a loop or function definition, but it seems like I must be missing something everytime I backspace backspace backspace backspace to unindent when I'm done with my loop.

Best Answer

iPython is built on GNU Readline - the same basis for command line editing in bash.

Readline's user documentation covers keyboard shortcuts.

Related Solutions

Google-chrome – How to configure CTRL+H as backspace under Google Chrome

I know this is an old question, but I came across this while trying to do the same thing as you so I'm gonna post this anyways.

I'm using Chromium and I used Ubuntu 12.04 (now I'm using Gentoo), but it shouldn't matter.

Executing:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"

will change the key bindings to the Emacs binding. If you're fine with that, then this is all. However, if you want to use Ctrl-a as "select all", there's a bit more work to do.

Take a look at /usr/share/themes/Default/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc and /usr/share/themes/Emacs/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc. The syntax should not be too difficult to understand. Copy all the key bindings you want to use to the /usr/share/themes/Default/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc. Don't forget to add the

class "GtkEntry" binding "foo"
class "GtkTextView" binding "foo"
class "GtkTextView" binding "bar"

part, which can be found at the very end of the file.

GNOME

The settings should be reflected by switching to the Emacs theme and switching back to the Default theme.

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Default"

Non-GNOME

Create and add the following to ~/.gtkrc-2.0

gtk-key-theme-name = "Default"

Restart Chromium and the settings should be reflected.

The best thing about this is that even if you set Ctrl-w to delete one word, you're still able to close tab when you're not inputting.

P.S. I also use the happy hacking keyboard and I'm happy to find someone who uses it too :)

Ubuntu 18.04 (GTK3)

Edit: 11/01/2018

After nearly 5 years, I'm updating this post for Ubuntu 18.04. I'm currently using Firefox, but the following should be independent of what browser you use.

On GTK3, the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 method no longer works. Instead, edit the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini and add the following line to the end:

gtk-key-theme-name=Emacs

If you want to modify the bindings, the Emacs binding can be found in /usr/share/themes/Emacs/gtk-3.0/gtk-keys.css, which can be copied over to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and modified.

Some references:

Readline / bash: How to map Escape key and Arrow keys

If you are using xterm, you can get it to send a CSI (0x9B) instead of the sequence \e[ by setting the eightBitControl boolean resource. For example, start xterm up like this:

xterm -xrm '*eightBitControl:true'

You can permanently set this resource by editing the XTerm application-specific resource file (Ubuntu seems to put this in /etc/X11/app-defaults but I think /usr/share/X11/app-defaults is more standard.)

But be warned: this will basically break your terminal until you fix up all your keybindings.

As for the more general question, I think it's more difficult than it might at first appear. The Linux console is pretty well designed around generating eight-bit character codes (so it can work with UTF-8). From an actual console (that is, not using X), you can get "raw" scancodes, but then you'd have to do all the keymapping logic yourself (which is what X does, in fact). You might be able to use the X keymapping facilities to generate some specific codes for alt+ctrl+letter combinations, but I don't know where you would squeeze them into the eight-bit coding sequence. I feel your pain, though :)