Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with alt-key on Apple iBook

[Willie Wong <wwong@Princeton.EDU>]

On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 02:44:54PM +0000, Penguin Lover Neil Bothwick squawked:
> This is nothing to do with the iBook hardware, my AMD64 box does it too.
> The Alt key works but Alt-n giving (arg: n) appears to be a feature of
> bash, although there's no reference to the Alt key in the bash manpage.
> 

Actually, it is gnu readline (I think). And there are indeed
references to that in 'man bash', just that you need to search for the
Meta key instead of alt. Meta/alt + number gives a numeric argument,
whose purpose I am not quite sure about. But in bash, a numeric
argument not associate to any readline commands would repeat the next
character n times, where n is the number after Meta. For example,
holding down the alt key and typing 100, then release the alt key and
hit a, would, get you on the command line, 100 'a's. 

HTH, 

W
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