How to switch gnu screen windows in iTerm2 via keyboard shortcuts

philipp.keller — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:17:08 +0000

I’m obsessed with having optimal keyboard shortcuts with whatever program. I recently switched from using client-side textmate to server-side vim as I want to move as much as possible to the cloud.

I have looked for a good way to switch windows in gnu screen for a long time without having to use ctrl-a 1. That’s what I came up with:

In Preferences, map your keys (e.g. cmd-1 or alt-1) to action: send hex code.
The hex code depends on what is your “screen key”.

Screen key ctrl-z

Screen number	hex code
1	`0x1a 0x31`
2	`0x1a 0x32`
9	`0x1a 0x39`

Screen key ctrl-a

Screen number	hex code
1	`0x01 0x31`
2	`0x01 0x32`
9	`0x01 0x39`

What is they key stroke in hex?

If you want to map other commands, here is a good resource

Python: display refreshing status (like top)

philipp.keller — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:24:50 +0000

In scripts I often want to display some status information (e.g. progress), this can be achieved with e.g.:

PLAIN TEXT

PYTHON:

print "progress: %i %%\r" % i,
sys.stdout.flush()

but this just works for one-liners. I wanted to have what top or less do: open a new "window" and being able to write everywhere in the window, not just on the last line.

Found out that curses does exactly that - but I didn't find a stripped-to-the-bare-necessities-example, so here you are: