Re: [Help-bash] Slow response?

[Bob Proulx]

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> For me, it was the ibm3151 terminal, and ESC B (go to command mode, go
> back to start of current Word).  On the ibm3151, \EB is kcud1 (down
> arrow).

I have the (somewhat bad) habit of hitting 'b' with the wrong index
finger.  If I were doing things according to the teachings then I
would use the left pinky finger for ESC and the left index finger for
'b'.  That would make that a hard sequence for me and slow enough that
I would probably never hit the escape sequence.  But I often hit 'b'
with the right index finger.  C-b is always that way for example.
Therefore I would also be very likely to hit ESC b very quickly and
would almost certainly have tripped on that escape sequence too.

> It's been 20+ years, but I *think* that my workaround at the time was
> to press "ESC SPACE B".  The SPACE broke up the escape sequence, so
> that I could press B as quickly as I wanted, instead of having to wait.

Ah!  The space is a good innocuous character there.  In my case I
simply learned just to wait for the cursor to move to the left after
an ESC confirming that I had left insert mode before hitting the 'h'.

[[Aside: I always thought it was strange that leaving insert mode the
cursor moves left one character.  If you "i ESC i ESC" repeatedly it
walks the cursor left even though the line is not changed.  It needs
to do that only when entering new text on a line since the cursor is
outside the end of the line when inserting and needs to move back onto
an existing character in the line.  But it does that even in the
middle of a line when there is no need to move back.  I always thought
that was odd.]]

> It's good to know that other people have (partly) shared my experiences!

There are still a lot of us left!  It hasn't been *that* long.  :-)

Bob