Linux terminal configurations for correct meta key handling

Ever wondered why your Alt+ key combinations are not working in your terminal? Chances are your terminal is in 7bit mode.

And that is exactly why you can't use Alt-p, Alt-P key combinations of YankStack (they are default mappings)

There is a ticket regarding this, if you want some background.

Hence, you have 3 options:

• remap YankStack key bindings (more details is in the readme)
• start terminal in 8bit mode (if that option available) for example rxvt --meta8
• Ask vim to handle it by adding following piece of code into your .vimrc

set <m-p> = ^[p   " rotate yanks forward
set <m-P> = ^[P   " rotate yanks backward
" note that, the ^[ is an Esc char that comes before the 'p'
" In most default configurations, ^[p may be typed by pressing first <C-v>, then <M-p>

A more generic solution will be adding following to your .vimrc so that any other Alt key combinations will work:

" fix meta-keys which generate <Esc>a .. <Esc>z
let c='a'
while c <= 'z'
  exec "set <M-".toupper(c).">=\e".c
  exec "imap \e".c." <M-".toupper(c).">"
  let c = nr2char(1+char2nr(c))
endw

Above snippet is obtained from Vim Wikia. For more in-depth understanding of the problem and solution there of read Get Alt key to work in terminal and Fix meta keys that break out of inset mode