[ESS] Changing keybindings in the interactive R shell

[Vitalie Spinu]

 >>> Lucas Holland on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 11:52:26 +0100 wrote:

[...]

 > (add-hook 'inferior-ess-mode-hook
 > 	    '(lambda()
 > 	       (local-set-key [\M-n] '(lambda () (interactive) (insert "~")))
 > 	       ))

This is a wrong syntax. A couple of related points first:

 - Don't overwrite useful keys like M-n to unrelated commands. If you
   go to that path you will have to overwrite them for all other
   repls.

 - How is pressing M-n better than "~"? You are forgoing a handy key for
   the sake of a symbol which is already on the keyboard.

 - M-n is a comint key so you will probably want to hook it into
   comint-mode-map to have the same functionality across all repls.
 
So, the right syntax and recommended bindings are:

   (define-key comint-mode-map [(meta ?p)] 'comint-previous-matching-input-from-input)
   (define-key comint-mode-map [(meta ?n)] 'comint-next-matching-input-from-input)
   (define-key comint-mode-map [(control meta ?n)] 'comint-next-prompt)
   (define-key comint-mode-map [(control meta ?p)] 'comint-previous-prompt)

For ess use `inferior-ess-mode-map` instead of `comint-mode-map`.

For most people `comint-previous-matching-input-from-input` is one of
the most commonly used commands. You better get used to it also.


  Vitalie