Linux vi arrow keys broken in insert mode

Question

My arrow keys don't work in vi in insert mode at home, they just each insert a newline and a capital letter, like 'A'. Is there a way to fix that?

Answer 1

vi does not support arrow keys in insert mode. Use vim. Although your vi may just be a link to vim, it may be configured to behave like the "original" vi and thus disables the arrow keys. Just invoke vim directly.

Answer 2

I just had an issue with arrow keys after switching over to use git in .vim.

I have installed this repo - https://github.com/sunaku/.vim

and after digging around for an hour, I found that AutoClose plugin (which didn't like anyway) broke the arrow keys.

The plugin docs suggest that one should set set ttimeoutlen=100, but that didn't work for me! (using urxvt+screen or urxvt, and even xterm)

So I removed the plugin at the end.

Answer 3

I had the same issue while using vim inside Windows 8.1 with Cygwin.

Solution worked for me is, just run the following command in your Cygwin terminal:

cp vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc

Answer 4

You might also want to try 'noesckeys'

Answer 5

In the command line write this:

EXINIT="set nocompatible"; export EXINIT