How do I make arrow keys work in MIT Scheme interpreter?

Question

I have installed MIT Scheme from the instructions here on my laptop running Yosemite. I can get the scheme interpreter from Terminal, but none of my arrow keys seem to working. For any typing mistakes I make I cannot go back and correct it. I have to use backspace or re-type the whole thing.

Left arrow prints ^[[D

Right arrow prints ^[[C

Up arrow prints ^[[A

Down arrow prints ^[[B

Here's a screenshot:

Favrot

As it is said in the page you linked, you should use Emacs to interact with the Scheme interpreter. For a more friendly interaction, you could also use Racket instead of Scheme, with its own IDE. – Netsuke

So, there is no other way to make it work in Terminal? Thanks for the tip of Racket. I will start using that instead. – Favrot

As you said, in terminal you have to use backspace or re-type the whole thing. – Netsuke

Answer 1

You could use rlwrap. Which is a wrap around the Readline. After installing in your system, just run as:

$ rlwrap mit-scheme

And it should work. There is a tutorial.

Even if it can be done, it doesn't mean you should. MIT-scheme already provides the Edwin editor, which is an emacs like editor, that works great. I use it everyday. It also comes with a graphical debugger. Your other options would be emacs+Geiser (or Greg's racket-mode), with guile or racket. Or DrRacket which is an IDE, with many aids for learning.

Handyman

hey, how do I start Edwin editor? I am doing SICP, thats the reason I have installed MIT Scheme. If you can share some resources/link about MIT Scheme, editor, debugger etc then it would be great. – Favrot

to start it directly from the command line $ mit-scheme --edit Take a look at the documentation – Handyman

docs are here now 👍 – Angelicaangelico

My scheme prompt is just scheme as I installed diff version using this, so starting the editor is scheme --edit. mit-scheme --edit returns command not found: mit-scheme which through me for a minute. In case anyone else runs into this... – Fanfani