Back to original question - why does my prompt change to "arg: 3" when I hit Alt+3?

[Nick Schermer]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> OK, so Alt+character doesn't work as I expect in xfce4-terminal.  :-)
>
> Can anyone explain why it does what it does?  When I hit Alt+<digit>
> my bash prompt changes to "(arg: <digit>)", hitting further Alt+<digit>
> keys adds digits to the prompt so that hitting, for example, Alt+5,
> Alt+4, Alt+3, Alt+2 gives me a prompt (arg: 5432).
>
> Ah, what it does is to repeat the next character entered arg times, what
> an extremely un-useful facility, does anyone have any idea where it
> comes from?  It's not from bash because the same thing happens within my
> editor.

How many terminal tabs have you opened? If $num < $num_tabs terminal
will pass the event to vte. If none of the Alt+keys combinations is
working; have you disabled "menu access keys" in the terminal
preferences (shortcuts tab)?

Nick