If you're just getting starting with a screen multiplexer, I'd suggest starting with tmux. My understanding is that GNU screen has effectively been abandoned.
I used GNU screen for at least 10 years, and recently switched to tmux. As someone else said, in GNU screen, if you want to send ctrl-a to your application (e.g. shell or emacs), you can do ctrl-a followed by a "naked" a. I found this becomes so second nature, for the rare time I'm not in screen/tmux, I habitually do the Ctrl-a a sequence!
tmux's default "action" sequence is Ctrl-b. Even without my history of Ctrl-a muscle memory, I think I'd find Ctrl-b awkward. I briefly tried to get used to it so I could live without a custom tmux config file, but just couldn't do it. So, here's my small ~/.tmux.conf file:
# remap Ctrl-b to Ctrl-a (to emulate behavior of GNU screen) unbind C-b set -g prefix C-a bind C-a send-prefix
# use vi-like keybindings set-window-option -g mode-keys vi
# emulate GNU screen's Ctrl-a a sequence to jump to beginning of # line bind a send-prefix
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 6:39 AM, xaos xaos@darksmile.net wrote:
Andrew,
Don't do it man. Don't remap screen key sequences.
I had the same issue. This is how I ultimately solved it. I mentally trained myself to think of screen as a room that I need to do a Ctrl-A in order to get in there.
So, for bash, It is NOT a big deal anyway. Train your fingers to do a Ctrl-A then a
It is just one extra keystroke.
I got used to it within a week.
-George On 10/30/15 7:13 AM, Scott Robbins wrote:
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 10:53:29AM +0100, Andrew Holway wrote:
Hey
I like to use Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E a lot to navigate my insane big bash one liners but this is incompatible with Screen which has a binding to Ctrl-A. Is it possible to move the screen binding so I can have the best of both worlds?
If you only make simple use of screen, then there's always tmux. It uses ctl+b by default, and one of the reasons is the issue you mention.
(If you have a lot of complex uses of screen, then it becomes a bigger deal to learn the new keyboard shortcuts, but many people just use it's attach and deteach feature, and relearning those in tmux takes a few minutes.)
If you are interested in trying it, I have my own very simple page with links to a better page at http://srobb.net/screentmux.html
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