KornShell (ksh) wraparound

shell unix command-line ksh editing
Allen Ratcliff picture Allen Ratcliff · Sep 26, 2008 · Viewed 9.9k times · Source

Okay, I am sure this is simple but it is driving me nuts. I recently went to work on a program where I have had to step back in time a bit and use Redhat 9. When I'm typing on the command line from a standard xterm running KornShell (ksh), and I reach the end of the line the screen slides to the right (cutting off the left side of my command) instead of wrapping the text around to a new line. This makes things difficult for me because I can't easily copy and paste from the previous command straight from the command line. I have to look at the history and paste the command from there. In case you are wondering, I do a lot of command-line awk scripts that cause the line to get quite long.

Is there a way to force the command line to wrap instead of shifting visibility to the right side of the command I am typing?

I have poured through man page options with no luck.

I'm running:

  • XFree86 4.2.99.903(174)
  • KSH 5.2.14.

Thanks.

Answer

tzot picture tzot · Sep 30, 2008

Did you do man ksh?

You want to do a set -o multiline.

Excerpt from man ksh:

multiline:

The built-in editors will use multiple lines on the screen for lines that are longer than the width of the screen. This may not work for all terminals.

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