Ytdyklly

Ubuntu 18.04

I'm using embedded terminal in my IDE and there is IDE-binding Ctrl8 which is pretty useful and convenient and I would not like to rebind it. However the Ctrl8 shortcut works as Backspace when IDE-embedded terminal is focused which is really annoying. Moreover Ctrl8 for backward character delete seems useless for me.

I tried to open a terminal and then opened to Edit -> Preferences, then Shortcuts but I did not found the Ctrl8 in there. So how to simply disable it? Is there some config file?

Ctrl8 is not a shortcut in the usual sense. Many terminal emulators conventionally send ^? (aka Ctrl?) for Ctrl8 (see this U&L post for details). This is not usually configurable behaviour, short of modifying the source code.

^? is the control code for ASCII Del and ^H (aka CtrlH) for ASCII Backspace (see this informative post for a lot more on that).

So, if you don't want Ctrl8 to delete a character, you may need to change:

• 
  

  the control code your terminal sends for the Backspace key. GNOME Terminal usually defaults to ^? (ASCII DEL), IIRC, so you need to set it to ^H. In GNOME Terminal, that's in Edit -> Profile Preferences -> Compatibility:

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  If your terminal doesn't have an option to configure this and sends ^? for Backspace, then the next two steps will break Backspace.

  
  


• 
  

  the control code that the pseudo-TTY uses for erase

  
  
  

  Check what it is now:

  
  
  

  $ stty -a | grep erase
  
  intr = ^C; quit = ^; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = M-^?; eol2 = M-^?;
  
  swtch = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W;
  
  

  
  
  

  If it's erase= ^?, you'll need to change that:

  
  
  

  stty erase '^H'
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  the control code that your shell uses for erasing the previous character. In bash, that defaults to both ^H and ^? if ^? is the erase character for the controlling TTY.

  
  
  

  Check what it is now:

  
  
  

  $ bind -p | grep backward-del
  
  "C-h": backward-delete-char
  
  "C-?": backward-delete-char
  
  

  
  
  

  Remove the C-? binding, and add a C-h binding if needed:

  
  
  

  bind -r 'C-?'
  
  bind 'C-h: backward-delete-char'
  
  

  
  
  

  Add these to your .bashrc to save these settings.

  
  

Or you can change your IDE shortcut.