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

[Chris G]

On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 12:52:03PM +0100, Nick Schermer wrote:
> 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)?
> 
I never (well, virtually never) use multiple tabs in my terminals so
only ever have one terminal tab open in any particular terminal window.
I just have lots of terminal windows - I start my system up with seven
terminal windows of various shapes and sizes on five workspaces.

I have both "Disable all menu access keys (such as Alt+f)" and "Disable
menu shortcut keys (F10 by default)" selected.

Alt+<digit> still gives me an (arg: <digit>) prompt.

-- 
Chris Green