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Hi, GHCi rightly uses the Vim-style mode of entering commands, where prefixing the prompt with a special character makes it into an entry on a meta-level (i.e. a command to the interpreter shell, not to the interpreter itself). Unfortunately, that character is fixed to be ':'.

Many Vim power users hate having to press Shift several times a second and so make ';' that character in Vim. It's a popular tip on the Vim Tips site:

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Map_semicolon_to_colon

and tells you to perform the following settings:

nnoremap ; : nnoremap : ; vnoremap ; : vnoremap : ;

Having used Vim like this for much over ten years now, it's not even a habit or reflex any more to type the semicolon, therefore (for me at least) it's cumbersome and error prone to type the colon in GHCi.

I ask that a new GHCi setting be added, with the following UI:

:set command-chars "string"

where each character of "string" will start command mode. Multiple (at least two) characters should be available for people switching from their old setting to their new setting.

When command mode is started, even if you had done :set command-chars ";" and then have typed ';', the prompt should still start with ':', just like in Vim. This is to signify that you're in the command "mode".

Thank you!

Trac metadata

Trac field	Value
Version	7.8.3
Type	FeatureRequest
TypeOfFailure	OtherFailure
Priority	normal
Resolution	Unresolved
Component	GHCi
Test case
Differential revisions
BlockedBy
Related
Blocking
CC	cheater, hvr
Operating system
Architecture