CTRL+U incorrect behaviour

[Bilge]

CTRL+U is supposed to remove characters before the cursor. Instead, it removes all characters. NB: CTRL+K works correctly by only deleting characters after the cursor.

[sserbin]

CTRL+U is supposed to remove characters before the cursor. Instead, it removes all characters

That's not entirely correct - this is an expected default behavior in readline only and you're probably using libedit (you can check readline_info() output to make sure).

In libedit, by default, Ctrl-U deletes entire line (as long as you're in emacs mode). Ctrl-W deletes all before cursor in libedit (in readline, Ctrl-W removes a word before cursor). You can also re-map Ctrl-U to delete everything before the cursor by adding the following to your ~/.editrc : bind "^U" vi-kill-line-prev

[Bilge]

you're probably using libedit

Actually I was referring to bash conventions but thanks for the information. It's too bad boris can't use bash.

[sserbin]

The thing is bash itself does not provide any of the line-editing/history capabilities. Instead, it leverages a library which manages all of that - readline. The conventions (keyboard shortcuts) you're referring to - are actually readline conventions.

Due to the fact readline is GPL-licensed, a number of alternative interface-compatible libraries have been developed for those wishing to remain under less permissive license (with libedit (BSD licensed) being the most widespread I believe). Others just choose to implement their own line-editing libraries (like Haskelline in Haskell or ZLE in ZSH).

Back to php and boris - boris relies on php's readline extension capabilities which in turn can be compiled with either readline or libedit libraries support. I believe in Debian-derivatives you'd mostly find php-readline package to be linked to libedit (as opposed to RHEL and CentOS - they link php5-readline to libreadline) - this is what I meant by "you're probably using libedit".

All in all, boris doesn't have any control on the underlying line-editing implementation (and thus default keyboard shortcuts) - it all depends on the environment.

[Bilge]

Thanks for the detailed explanation @sserbin, I didn't realize the behavior was platform-dependent. Your suggestion to modify ~/.editrc worked for me so thanks a lot for that.

Since you appear so knowledgeable on this topic, do you have a way to fix my one other outstanding complaint about the [delete] key not working as expected? (#116)