willfullyobtuse.com/content/posts/inputrc.md

+++ title = "vi-mode editing in most places" date = "2022-11-13" +++

Vi/Vim bindings

For my sake, I prefer to have Vim bindings in as many places as possible.

Most shells can be configured to use Vim bindings by putting set -o vi somewhere in your shell startup script.

If you're using ZSH then you'll probably want an additional binding to restore CTRL-R reverse history search.

bindkey '^R' history-incremental-search-backward

For CLI tools that use the readline library then you can configure its input mode using a .inputrc file in your $HOME directory.

This affects REPLs like ghci and tools like psql.

set editing-mode vi
$if mode=vi

set keymap vi-command
# these are for vi-command mode
Control-l: clear-screen

set keymap vi-insert
# these are for vi-insert mode
Control-l: clear-screen
$endif