Regarding Alt+x in zsh and how to bind Alt+x to something else

zsh

When I type Alt-x, execute: will pop up:

~ % 
execute: _

And I can continue type(space has no effect):

~ %        
execute: what'sthis

Q1: what's this promotion for?

Q2: How can i modify this shortcut to other key-binding? Because M-x in emacs is quite useful, and i use shell in emacs often, so the two conflict.

I have google for hours, but still have no answers(maybe my keywords are not correct–google: "zsh" + "excute:", "google: zsh keybinding bindkey

Best Answer

If you do:

bindkey | grep -F '^[x'

or simply:

bindkey '^[x'

or if in doubt about how to express Alt+x:

bindkey | grep -w x

You'll see:

"^[x" execute-named-cmd

That's the name of the widget bound to ESC x and most terminals send the ESC x character sequence upon pressing Alt+x

info zsh execute-named-cmd

Will tell you what that widget does (you may need to install the zsh-doc package on some systems).

As the name suggests, it prompts for a command to execute. Commands here being zsh widgets, editor commands. That's the equivalent of emacs' Meta-x, except that it's zsh editor commands instead of emacs command (the command is called execute-extended-command in emacs)

For instance, if at that prompt, you type backward-delete-char and press Return, it will invoke that widget which by default is bound to Backspace. You can do exactly the same in emacs.

If instead, you type descTab (Tab for completing it into describe-key-briefly, a widget not bound to any key by default, and also found in emacs) and press Return, you'll see another prompt:

$
Describe key briefly: _

Where you can press, say, Alt+x to see what that's bound do. You'd then get:

"^[x" is execute-named-cmd

If you do the same in emacs, you'll see:

M-x runs the command execute-extended-command

To see the list of widgets, run zle -al, zle -l for the non-builtin ones, bindkey to list the key bindings.

You can bind Alt+x to something else with

bindkey "^[x" some-widget

Related Solutions

Shell – Is there something like closures for zsh

Zsh doesn't have anything like closures or packages or namespaces. Zsh lacks a bunch of things required to have true closures:

Functions aren't first class. You can't pass functions around as arguments to other functions, and functions can't return other functions. (You can pass the name of a function to call, but that's not the same as passing the function itself).
You can't have nested functions. All functions in zsh are global. You must prefix your function names to avoid conflicts. Note especially that functions will shadow external programs with the same name. If you have a function called ls, it will be called instead of the program ls. This can be useful, except if you do it by accident.
Variables are dynamically scoped, not statically scoped like in most modern languages. Even if you could have nested functions, inner functions wouldn't close over the local variables of outer functions in the way you would normally expect. You couldn't use them to make modules the way people do in, say, Javascript.
Zsh does have anonymous functions, but without any of these other things they're not useful for much.

So basically, the best you can do is to prefix all your functions and global variables.

I'll also point out that you should do define your precmd like this:

% autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
% add-zsh-hook precmd my_precmd_function

add-zsh-hook lets you hook your function into precmd without it overwriting any other functions that might also want to hook precmd.

What it means to have a function loaded is a separate question. Zsh has an autoloading feature that only loads functions from disk when they're actually called. When you do autoload -Uz foobar, that makes the function named foobar available to call. When you actually call foobar, that loads the definition from disk.

Bind key sequence to Escape, zsh

You need -s to bind actual strings instead of widgets:

bindkey -s jj '\e'

Though you probably want to map jj to the vi-cmd-mode widget here:

bindkey jj vi-cmd-mode

(note that's for binding in insert mode, not normal/command mode)

Best Answer

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Shell – Is there something like closures for zsh

Bind key sequence to Escape, zsh

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