Auto-completion via bindkey "^[[A" not working in zsh 5.0.0-1ubuntu1

[Hendrik Spiegel]

My .zshrc file contains the lines

bindkey "^[[A" history-beginning-search-backward
bindkey "^[[B" history-beginning-search-forward

to do a incremental forward/backward search. This stopped working when installing Ubuntu 12.10.

To make sure that this is not caused by a broken configuration I did a clean install in VirtualBox where I was able to reproduce the problem.

What I found out is that searching using up/down keys does work in zsh-beta and zsh-static but NOT in zsh (installed versions etc. see below). Binding the function to different keys also works.

hsp-VirtualBox% dpkg -l|grep zsh
ii zsh 5.0.0-1ubuntu1 amd64 shell with lots of features
ii zsh-beta 4.3.17-dev-0+20120621-1ubuntu1 amd64 A shell with lots of features (dev tree)
ii zsh-lovers 0.8.3-0ubuntu2 all tips, tricks and examples for the zsh
ii zsh-static 5.0.0-1ubuntu1 amd64 shell with lots of features (static link)

hsp-VirtualBox% lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu quantal (development branch)
Release: 12.10

hsp-VirtualBox% cat .zshrc
HISTFILE=~/.histfile
HISTSIZE=1000
SAVEHIST=1000
bindkey "^[[A" history-beginning-search-backward
bindkey "^[[B" history-beginning-search-forward
hsp-VirtualBox%

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[christian geier (ubuntu-hwbqs6t)]

I can confirm this behaviour

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi,

Hendrik Spiegel wrote in https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1048212:
> Subject: Auto-completion via bindkey "^[[A" not working in zsh 5.0.0-1ubuntu1

Not sure, but this is possibly fixed in 5.0.0-2 (of Debian Experimental):

   [ Frank Terbeck ]
   * [0b3b271c] Do not use echoti {smkx,rmkx} unconditionally
   * [ab84f082] Print directly from $terminfo instead of using `echoti'

Frank, can you confirm (or deny) that?

> What I found out is that searching using up/down keys does work in zsh-
> beta

That's expected. zsh-beta is likely to vanish in the future and
already no more in sync with zsh's packaging.

> and zsh-static but NOT in zsh

_That_ sounds like a bug. zsh-static and zsh are expected to behave
identically as they're built from the same source package (while
zsh-beta is an independent source package).

Cc'ing the Debian Zsh Packaging Team as the zsh-static vs zsh
difference is possibly an issue which is still present in Debian's zsh
package, too. (And for the question to Frank above.)

  Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`. | Axel Beckert <email address hidden>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
  `- | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5

[Gabriel Fróes Franco (gffranco)]

One additional comment for this bug. For me this is not working only when inside Unity. If I log in on the tty1 (ctrl+alt+f1) everything works as expected. Hope this helps.

[JayCee (x-launchpad-jaycee)]

Same inside Gnome 3 without Unity. Works fine on tty1.

[Arnaud Guignard (aguignard)]

I found a workaround on the Debian Zsh Maintainers mailing-list [0]. I added this line to my ~/.zshenv :

  DEBIAN_PREVENT_KEYBOARD_CHANGES=yes

[0] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-zsh-devel/2012-September/000537.html

[JayCee (x-launchpad-jaycee)]

This workaround works for me (Gnome Shell 3.6.1).

[Gabriel Fróes Franco (gffranco)]

I can confirm the workaround works on Unity as well.

[Sergey Prokhorov (seriy-pr)]

Also https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/1433

[adarsh barik (adarshbarik1)]

Its not working for me in ubuntu 12.10 (both unity and gnome-shell 3.6). Proposed workaround is also not working. Problem occurs while using oh-my-zsh. It works fine with $ zsh -f -l .

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

@adarsh barik: Then your issue is probably a different issue. One with oh-my-zsh.

[Roland65 (roland65)]

Yes, adding DEBIAN_PREVENT_KEYBOARD_CHANGES=yes to ~/.zshenv fixes the reported issue but now the Home, End and Del keys don't work anymore!
Do these keys work by yours?