ESC followed by UP-arrow cause bash shell to hang

ESC followed by UP-arrow cause bash shell to hang

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

I do a lot of command recall on the command line (xterm running on
Xorg server in Cygwin).  One of the most common things I do is type
the UP-arrow once, then ESC-backspace to get rid of the last word on
the line, so I can change it to something else.  Occasionally I type
these two keys out-of-order, ESC followed by UP-arrow.  This seems to
lock up the bash shell for about 30 seconds before control returns.

What's going on here?  Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is there
a way to prevent this, other than being a better typist?

-- 
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us

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Re: ESC followed by UP-arrow cause bash shell to hang

[Steven Penny]

On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 17:49:08, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
> I do a lot of command recall on the command line (xterm running on
> Xorg server in Cygwin).  One of the most common things I do is type
> the UP-arrow once, then ESC-backspace to get rid of the last word on
> the line, so I can change it to something else.

Ctrl + W also works:

    $ bind -q unix-word-rubout
    unix-word-rubout can be invoked via "\C-w".

> Occasionally I type these two keys out-of-order, ESC followed by UP-arrow.
> This seems to lock up the bash shell for about 30 seconds before control
> returns.

not for me - it prints "[A", as well as triggering a "bell", but "lock up" for
me is about 1 second - however note i am using "Cygwin.bat" and custom
terminal [1].

also note if you chose to start using "Ctrl + W" it would avoid the problem, as
a mistaken "Ctrl, Up" would be the same as simply "Up"

[1] http://github.com/svnpenn/bay/blob/master/config/bash/cygwin-readline.ti


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Re: ESC followed by UP-arrow cause bash shell to hang

[Wayne Davison]

On Sat, Jan 6, 2018 at 4:49 PM, Jim Reisert wrote:
> [...] ESC followed by UP-arrow.  This seems to lock up the
> bash shell for about 30 seconds before control returns.

Your up-arrow is probably a character sequence that starts with an Esc
(you can verify that by typing a Ctrl+V followed by your up-arrow key
and bash will show you something like "^[[A"). So, the issue is that
Esc Esc is usually the completion command like pressing Tab. In
command position, bash will churn through all your path dirs and then
then it will typically ring the bell to tell you that the completion
is not unique (hit Esc Esc again to get a list).

..wayne..

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