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14 Input

At various times ratpoison will prompt you for input. Ratpoison sports a fully featured line editor. The following table lists the keystrokes and actions:

<C-g>
<escape>
abort the command requesting input.
<C-f>
<right arrow>
move forward a character.
<C-b>
<left arrow>
move backward a character.
<M-f>
move forward a word.
<M-b>
move backward a word.
<C-a>
<home>
move to the beginning of the line.
<C-e>
<end>
move to the end of the line.
<C-d>
<delete>
delete the character at point.
<M-d>
delete the word at point.
<backspace>
delete the character before the point.
<M-backspace>
delete the word before the point.
<C-k>
delete from the point to the end of the line.
<C-u>
delete from the point to the beginning of the line.
<C-y>
Yank the text from the X11 cut buffer.
<C-p>
<up arrow>
Cycle backwards through the history (This command does nothing if ratpoison was configured with the --disable-history configure option).
<C-n>
<down arrow>
Cycle forwards through the history (This command does nothing if ratpoison was configured with the --disable-history configure option).
<return>
submit the line of text.
<tab>
complete the text up to the point or if there are several possible completions, cycle through them. This only works in certain contexts. Tab completion will complete a shell command, a window name, a group name, and colon commands in their appropriate context (i.e. when being asked for a window name).
<S-iso-lefttab>
This is shift + tab by the way. This does the same as tab, but cycles backwards through the completions.

All input is stored in the same history list. By default ratpoison has a history length of 100 entries. This history is saved to the file ~/.ratpoison_history and is loaded when you start ratpoison. This means your history sticks between sessions. This assumes history has not been disabled on compilation.