cannot type 'e' or 'P' in MinGW/msys shells or terminals

Question

I have successfully installed and used MinGW and msys in the past to compile and link Windows executables. On a fresh installation for 32-bit Vista (the same platform as when I had previous success) I am getting some maddening behavior: when I type lower-case 'e' or upper-case 'P' in the provided shell environments I get an audible beep but no character! Meaning I cannot type "make" or "echo" and then run those commands, for instance. It goes: m-a-k-BEEP!

This no 'e' BEEPing occurs in the shell that opens when you invoke msys via the shortcut that gets generated by the installer, and in shells by navigating to c:\msys\1.0\bin and just double-clicking bash.exe, sh.exe, rxvt.exe (actually that has more of a muffled noise puff than a crisp BEEP), but always lower-case 'e' and capital 'P' will not echo to the terminal (or shell? obviously I don't have a handle on the differences between these terms).

I have tried the automated MinGW and msys installers, and a fresh manual install to the same end.

I do not understand shells very well, or how their environments evolve as they start up, so I don't know where to start looking for the source of this wacky behavior.

Darrondarrow

Got the same issue with git shell on Windows, not with fresh MinGW's bash though. (The same fix worked)... Maybe that's specific for some MSys version? – Mischief

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're using Bash. It sounds to me like the key bindings have gotten messed up for some reason.

If you do this command:

bind -p|grep -i '"[pE]"'

you should get this result:

"E": self-insert
"e": self-insert
"P": self-insert
"p": self-insert

If the entries for "P" and "e" are missing then try these commands.

bind '"e":self-insert'
bind '"P":self-insert'

Obviously, you can't type the characters, so type their opposite-case version, press left-arrow, then press Alt-u to upcase the small "p" or Alt-l (that's a lower-case "ell") to downcase the capital "E" (you will need to do this for each "e" in the first command).

If that works, check the ~/.inputrc file for invalid keybindings. Also, check your startup files such as ~/.bashrc, etc. The issue is likely to be with missing or misplaced quotation marks and it may be for a key binding for something like \eP which, by default, is bound to the readline function do-lowercase-version.

Dragrope

Your instructions worked perfectly. I was able to see that indeed "P" and "e" did not have self-insert bindings, added them in, everything worked. Then I started hunting around and sure enough in my '~/.inputrc' file I found the offending lines I had added, thinking them benign: 'echo $PATH' and 'PATH = $PATH:/c/MinGW/msys/1.0/bin:.' and 'echo $PATH' which for whatever reason when in cause the problem, and when taken out fix it. Thank you! – Darrondarrow

@dim fish: Yes, ~/.inputrc isn't an executable file so you can't put commands in it. – Dragrope

@DennisWilliamson I have the same problem with "b". I had the same problem with "e" which I solved by removing all settings from .inputrc. Before "b" inserted a single double-quote, now pressing "b" inserts an infinite string of double-quotes until i press ctrl-c. I put bind '"b":self-insert' into inputrc but no changes.My msys is very minimal, almost no packages except for coreutils. – Adze

@otonvm: bind is a shell command, so you might use it in a shell script (such as ~/.bashrc). However, to add key bindings in ~/.inputrc omit the bind command and the outer set of single quotes. Also note that a dot is the first character of the name .inputrc – Dragrope

@DennisWilliamson Ah I see now! I just assumed that .inputrc is the same as .profile or .bash_profile. It's obvious now. Thanks! (I should have read the comment before better, sorry!) – Adze

Answer 2

In the directory C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername, you can find a file named '.bashrc' add the following 2 lines bind '"e":self-insert' bind '"P":self-insert'

Dennis Williamson, Thank you very much! This problem bothering me for a long time.

Bevus