Chapter 8: Command Line Editing

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history-preserve-point

If set to ‘on’, the history code attempts to place the point (the current cursor position) at the same location on each history line retrieved with previous-history or next-history. The default is ‘off’. history-size

Set the maximum number of history entries saved in the history list. If set to zero, any existing history entries are deleted and no new entries are saved. If set to a value less than zero, the number of history entries is not limited. By default, the number of history entries is not limited. horizontal-scroll-mode

This variable can be set to either ‘on’ or ‘off’. Setting it to ‘on’ means that the text of the lines being edited will scroll horizontally on a single screen line when they are longer than the width of the screen, instead of wrapping onto a new screen line. By default, this variable is set to ‘off’. input-meta

If set to ‘on’, Readline will enable eight-bit input (it will not clear the eighth bit in the characters it reads), regardless of what the terminal claims it can support. The default value is ‘off’. The name meta-flag is a synonym for this variable. isearch-terminators

The string of characters that should terminate an incremental search without subsequently executing the character as a command

(see Section 8.2.5 [Searching], page 103). If this variable has not been given a value, the characters ESC and C-J will terminate an incremental search. keymap

Sets Readline’s idea of the current keymap for key binding com- mands.

Acceptable keymap names are emacs, emacs-standard, emacs-meta, emacs-ctlx, vi, vi-move, vi-command, and vi-insert. vi is equivalent to vi-command; emacs is equivalent to emacs-standard. The default value is emacs. The value of the editing-mode variable also affects the default keymap. keyseq-timeout

Specifies the duration Readline will wait for a character when read- ing an ambiguous key sequence (one that can form a complete key sequence using the input read so far, or can take additional input to complete a longer key sequence). If no input is received within the timeout, Readline will use the shorter but complete key se- quence. Readline uses this value to determine whether or not input is available on the current input source (rl_instream by default).

The value is specified in milliseconds, so a value of 1000 means that

Readline will wait one second for additional input. If this variable is