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 1:07 PM, Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> 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.

Then of course it does give you the prompt, its a readline feature. If
you checked the "Disable all menu access keys" then all the input is
send to the terminal. So what is exactly your problem?

Nick