A.3 Key Bindings

The key bindings and some other parameters of the Readline library can be customized by placing commands in an initialization file called `$HOME/.inputrc'. Key bindings have the form

key-name: function-name

or

"string": function-name

and options can be set with

set option-name value

For example:

# I prefer vi-style editing:
set editing-mode vi
# Edit using a single line:
set horizontal-scroll-mode On
# Rebind some keys:
Meta-h: backward-kill-word
"\C-u": universal-argument
"\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file

Note that the default binding for TAB in Python is to insert a TAB instead of Readline's default filename completion function. If you insist, you can override this by putting

TAB: complete

in your `$HOME/.inputrc'. (Of course, this makes it hard to type indented continuation lines...)