Bash Vi Command Line Editing Mode | Hacker News Reader

Bash Vi Command Line Editing Mode

catonmat.net

28 pointstimmorgan20 comments

It's readline that has the vi mode

  set editing-mode vi

in .inputrc will enable it everywhere.

luckily not everything on the command line uses readline, else there'd be way more gpl licensed command line tools. vi mode has been in nsh and pdksh, independent of gnu readline. It is also part of the specification for sh at opengroup.org:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/sh.h...

Interesting note about emacs mode though:

In early proposals, the KornShell-derived emacs mode of command line editing was included, even though the emacs editor itself was not. The community of emacs proponents was adamant that the full emacs editor not be standardized because they were concerned that an attempt to standardize this very powerful environment would encourage vendors to ship strictly conforming versions lacking the extensibility required by the community. The author of the original emacs program also expressed his desire to omit the program. Furthermore, there were a number of historical systems that did not include emacs, or included it without supporting it, but there were very few that did not include and support vi. The shell emacs command line editing mode was finally omitted because it became apparent that the KornShell version and the editor being distributed with the GNU system had diverged in some respects. The author of emacs requested that the POSIX emacs mode either be deleted or have a significant number of unspecified conditions. Although the KornShell author agreed to consider changes to bring the shell into alignment, the standard developers decided to defer specification at that time. At the time, it was assumed that convergence on an acceptable definition would occur for a subsequent draft, but that has not happened, and there appears to be no impetus to do so. In any case, implementations are free to offer additional command line editing modes based on the exact models of editors their users are most comfortable with.

This works in ZSH as well, I also didn't know about it so this is definitely going to save me a lot of keystrokes. Although I already had some of the regular shortcuts memorized (like ctrl-a goes to start of the line) being able to use one set of keybindings is great!

And in Zsh, you could even have it show the current Vi mode (Insert or Command) in the prompt. I don't have my .zshrc handy, I'll try to get the command once I get the .zshrc.

Wow, that's been my biggest trouble with vi mode for years, and I've been using Zsh for a long time and didn't know it could do that. I would be eternally grateful if you could post the solution here...

I'm at work after a long vacation, so got access to my .zshrc. Here's the relevant part:

    #It starts in insert mode
    export VIMODE=INS
    function zle-keymap-select {
        VIMODE="${${KEYMAP/vicmd/CMD}/(main|viins)/INS}"
        zle reset-prompt
    }

    zle -N zle-keymap-select

    bindkey -v

I use Oh My Zsh, but as far as I know this should work without it too.

Wish HN had a notify-on-reply system like Reddit's orangered. Would you see this? Would you not? Would I miss eternal gratefulness from a fellow HN citizen? Oh, how I wish I knew the answer!

Maybe you won't even see this ;) , but it unfortunately doesn't seem to work on my vanilla Zsh. Perhaps I'll look into OMZ a bit and see if things work out that way. Thanks anyways :)

I've been using Ubuntu and bash for several years now, and never knew until today that Bash had a Vi mode. I'm ashamed.

My biggest complaint about readline's vi mode is that there is no visual indicator of what mode you are in, and it seems there are quite a few actions that unexpectedly take you out of insert mode as compared to using Vim, and without some way of seeing this, it's an exercise in frustration.

I've been using Vim as my primary editor/IDE for three years now, and I still can't get used to vi mode on the command line, and keep going back to emacs mode because it functions exactly like you would expect it to.

I use vim as my editor but never got on with "vi mode" in bash/readline or zsh/zle. However, when you have a complicated command line you can use vim (or your favorite $EDITOR) on it.

In bash type Ctrl-x-e

In zsh I press Ctrl-z, which does what I want because I have this in my .zshrc:

  setopt hist_ignore_space # trick so that history doesn't get polluted
  function edithist() {
     local tmp=${TMPPREFIX}${$}hist
     read -Erz >| "$tmp"
     "$EDITOR" "$tmp"
     print -Rz - "$(<$tmp)"
     rm "$tmp"
  }
  bindkey -e '\M-q' push-input # replaces push-line in 3.0.x
  bindkey -e -s '\C-z' '\M-q edithist\n'

The zsh version leaves you editing the command line after exiting the editor. The bash version executes the command after exiting the editor.

And if you don't have a problem with vi mode, use ESC to enter command mode and enter v to edit the command line in ${EDITOR}

I've known about Vi mode for a long time, but have never been able to make the switch. It's a brain bender!

Something similar happened to me. I'm a happy Vim user and have been for years, but I've always used bash in emacs mode.

However, some months ago I started to work in an environment full of Solaris 8 machines with ksh as their default shell in vi mode for some reason. It's configured that way for every machine and we have to constantly log in and out of them to do our jobs, and it's always been that way so I simply didn't ask for it to change. After all I was also the new guy.

After a few weeks I got so tired of trying to use emacs commands in vi mode shells while at work, and vi commands while in emacs mode at home that I changed to vi mode at home. And I've been happy since then. It's not that hard. You get used to it quickly, especially if you use vi or Vim a lot like I do.

One really really annoying thing about this: pressing return in "normal" or "insert" modes executes the command. That behaviour just doesn't feel right.

Why? What would you expect it to do?

Well, Enter in normal mode in vi puts the cursor on the next line, at the first non-whitespace character. I would like enter in "normal mode bash" to do the same. I would also like to scroll up (j) and see the previous command as i left it (i.e. if modified, show them).

That's what return does in Vim's command-line window.

in command mode you can press v and open up what you have entered into vi edit :wq and it's executing.

Is there an analog for \e on the postgres console? That makes more sense to me than using vi editing all the time

Reply on news.ycombinator.com