Zsh zle shift selection

Question

How to use shift to select part of the commandline (like in many text editors) ?

Answer 1

Expanding on Stephane's excellent answer from almost 3 years ago, I added some more bindings to make the behaviour (almost) completely consistent with all of Windows' standard keyboard behaviour:

• Selection is cleared when using a navigation key (arrow, home, end) WITHOUT shift
• Backspace and Del delete an active selection
• Selection is extended to the next/previous word when using Ctrl+Shift+Left/Ctrl+Shift+Right
• Shift+Home and Shift+End extend the selection to the beginning and end of line respectively. Ctrl+Shift+Home and Ctrl+Shift+End do the same.

Two things that are not exactly the same:

• Extending a selection to the next word includes trailing space, unlike windows. This could be fixed, but it doesn't bother me.
• Typing when there is an active selection will not delete it and replace it with the character you typed. This would seem to require a lot more work to remap the entire keyboard. Not worth the trouble to me.

Note that the default mintty behaviour is to bind Shift+End and Shift+Home to access the scroll back buffer. This supercedes the zsh configuration; the keys never get passed through. In order for these to work, you will need to configure a different key (or disable scroll back) in /etc/minttyrc or ~/.minttyrc. See "modifier for scrolling" here - the simplest solution is just set ScrollMod=2 to bind it to Alt instead of Shift.

So everything:

~/.minttyrc

ScrollMod=2

~/.zshrc

r-delregion() {
  if ((REGION_ACTIVE)) then
     zle kill-region
  else 
    local widget_name=$1
    shift
    zle $widget_name -- $@
  fi
}

r-deselect() {
  ((REGION_ACTIVE = 0))
  local widget_name=$1
  shift
  zle $widget_name -- $@
}

r-select() {
  ((REGION_ACTIVE)) || zle set-mark-command
  local widget_name=$1
  shift
  zle $widget_name -- $@
}

for key     kcap   seq        mode   widget (
    sleft   kLFT   $'\e[1;2D' select   backward-char
    sright  kRIT   $'\e[1;2C' select   forward-char
    sup     kri    $'\e[1;2A' select   up-line-or-history
    sdown   kind   $'\e[1;2B' select   down-line-or-history

    send    kEND   $'\E[1;2F' select   end-of-line
    send2   x      $'\E[4;2~' select   end-of-line

    shome   kHOM   $'\E[1;2H' select   beginning-of-line
    shome2  x      $'\E[1;2~' select   beginning-of-line

    left    kcub1  $'\EOD'    deselect backward-char
    right   kcuf1  $'\EOC'    deselect forward-char

    end     kend   $'\EOF'    deselect end-of-line
    end2    x      $'\E4~'    deselect end-of-line

    home    khome  $'\EOH'    deselect beginning-of-line
    home2   x      $'\E1~'    deselect beginning-of-line

    csleft  x      $'\E[1;6D' select   backward-word
    csright x      $'\E[1;6C' select   forward-word
    csend   x      $'\E[1;6F' select   end-of-line
    cshome  x      $'\E[1;6H' select   beginning-of-line

    cleft   x      $'\E[1;5D' deselect backward-word
    cright  x      $'\E[1;5C' deselect forward-word

    del     kdch1   $'\E[3~'  delregion delete-char
    bs      x       $'^?'     delregion backward-delete-char

  ) {
  eval "key-$key() {
    r-$mode $widget \$@
  }"
  zle -N key-$key
  bindkey ${terminfo[$kcap]-$seq} key-$key
}

This covers keycodes from several different keyboard configurations I have used.

Note: the values in the "key" column don't mean anything, they are just used to build a named reference for zle. They could be anything. What is important is the seq, mode and widget columns.

Note 2: You can bind pretty much any keys you want, you just need the key codes used in your console emulator. Open a regular console (without running zsh) and type Ctrl+V and then the key you want. It should emit the code. ^[ means \E.

Answer 2

shift-arrow() {
  ((REGION_ACTIVE)) || zle set-mark-command
  zle $1
}
shift-left()  shift-arrow backward-char
shift-right() shift-arrow forward-char
shift-up()    shift-arrow up-line-or-history
shift-down()  shift-arrow down-line-or-history
zle -N shift-left
zle -N shift-right
zle -N shift-up
zle -N shift-down

bindkey $terminfo[kLFT] shift-left
bindkey $terminfo[kRIT] shift-right
bindkey $terminfo[kri]  shift-up
bindkey $terminfo[kind] shift-down

That assumes your terminal sends a different escape sequence upon Shift-Arrows from the one sent upon Arrow and that your terminfo database is properly populated with corresponding kLFT and kRIT capabilities, and that you're using emacs style key binding.

Or, to factorize the code a bit:

shift-arrow() {
  ((REGION_ACTIVE)) || zle set-mark-command
  zle $1
}
for key  kcap seq        widget (
    left  LFT $'\e[1;2D' backward-char
    right RIT $'\e[1;2C' forward-char
    up    ri  $'\e[1;2A' up-line-or-history
    down  ind $'\e[1;2B' down-line-or-history
  ) {
  functions[shift-$key]="shift-arrow $widget"
  zle -N shift-$key
  bindkey ${terminfo[k$kcap]-$seq} shift-$key
}

Above, hardcoded sequences for cases where the terminfo database doesn't have the information (using xterm sequences).