Word movement in OS X Leopard Terminal.app is a pain! After long time searching, I must keep the solution documented here.
I’ve been searching for a long time, how to fix home/end keys and how to jump words. In every OS X application, cmd + arrows and option + arrows would do the trick, except Terminal.app. I had once fixed it for OS X Tiger, but I couldn’t remember how…
Finally, I’ve found it. Thanks Textmate guys!
My choice is for fn + arrows (home/end) to begin/end of lines and ctrl + arrows to jump words. Fire your Terminal.app, hit cmd + , (yes, period); the alternative is Terminal -> Preferences. Go to Settings area, then Keyboard tab. Edit your combos as below:
The trick is the code \033b. It is produced through esc (\033) + b and represents “move one word backward”. Forward movement is esc + f, home is ctrl + a (\001) and end is ctrl + e (\005).
This is a good trick to know.. much appreciated. Another item I am trying to find is how to modify the word boundaries for text selection.. in iTerm, I can specify what characters make up words I want to click on to select. for example, if I have /dev/nst0 and click on that string “/dev/nst0″ in Terminal, it only selects “dev” or “nst0″, I need it to select “/dev/nst0″ so I can copy/paste. Any ideas on this for macs Terminal.app?
No idea. I’m suspecting Terminal.app can’t do it.
[...] If you’re using Terminal.app a lot, like I do (I switched back from iTerm with Leopard because it finally has tabs now and other useful features), you want to read Fabio Kung’s post about “Word Movement in OS X Leopard Terminal.app“! [...]