zsh shortcut 'ctrl + A' not working

Question

I recently switch from bash to zsh shell. To be more precise, the oh-my-zsh Very nice, but the shortcut I most often use; jumping to the beginning/end of the line doesn't work anymore. From the docs it should be

ctrl + A --> beginning
ctrl + E --> end

However, when I do that I get the following

$~> my-command
$~> my-command^A   # did a ctrl + A here

Although I see this working by everybody else, on my system something seems to be different. Any suggestions what that might be ?

Solution 1

you don't have to config the Ctrl+A behavior if you use default keymap (emacs keymap). It does what you are expecting.

However if you set your zle to use vi keymap, you have to define the keybind for vi-beginning-of-line. same for Ctrl+E.

So check which keymap did you set in config. If it was vi, try pressing ESC then ^ and $ should do what you want.

Solution 2

If you're wondering why this happened: You likely have $EDITOR or $VISUAL set to vi/vim which made zsh default to the vi keymap which doesn't use ctrl+a for moving the caret.

Adding bindkey -e to ~/.zshrc will restore the old behavior (emacs keymap).

Solution 3

zsh .zshrc

bindkey "^A" vi-beginning-of-line

Comments

[chepner]

Check if bindkey | fgrep '^A' returns a line like ""^A" beginning-of-line".

[Jeanluca Scaljeri]

if I do that I get for Ctrl+A: "^A"-"^C" self-insert and for Ctrl+E: "^E"-"^F" self-insert

[Jeanluca Scaljeri]

Any suggestions how to check this ?

[Kent]

@JeanlucaScaljeri you don't know which keymap you are using ? bindkey -v bind vi, bindkye -e binds emacs

[Jeanluca Scaljeri]

what would be the preferred way to define this system wide (mac) ? For a specific user is also ok if that is easier ? Now if I open a new terminal I have to this this binding again

[Kent]

@JeanlucaScaljeri write it in your ~/.zshrc

[Jeanluca Scaljeri]

If I add something like this to my .zshrc it doesn't work: bindkey -e . So should I export something maybe ?

[Kent]

Very likely you have Bindkey -v you letter find and remove it. Or you put -e at the end of your config

[Jeanluca Scaljeri]

couldn't find it, but when I put that command at the end of .zshrc it works! thnx!

[mareoraft]

This is the correct solution for people that want to keep the vim keymap. Use bindkey "^E" vi-end-of-line to map ctrl + E to the end of line behavior.

[Josh]

This was it for me. in fact I didn't even have $VISUAL set to vi, I had it set to a command which opened an IDE and the path happened to contain the word visual 🤦🏼‍♂️

[mbafford]

Thank you! This helped me with VSCode/zsh embedded terminal not respecting ^A/^E. I found other hints to make these keys work for iTerm2, but that involved changing how iTerm2 behaves rather than fixing the underlying problem.