Cursor jumping around in IEX

Questions / Help
1

Hi there,

I’ve just started learning Elixir. I have noticed an annoying problem when using IEX - the cursor jumps around when typing parenthesis. Please see this screen capture: https://imgur.com/a/OrjYuQ7

I found if I use the environment variable TERM=dumb this problem doesn’t happen.

Is there any way to disable this annoying behaviour? I am using the Terminal app on OSX.

Thanks!

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2

Hello and welcome,

It does not jump around… it briefly indicates the opening parenthesis when closing one.

It’s clear if You type (“long long params”), You will see it highlights briefly the start, then goes back to normal position.

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3

Thanks @kokolegorille. Is there any way to disable this behavior? I’m used to other REPL environments and while I can see it being useful to others, it keeps distracting and frustrating me.

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4

Sorry for reviving this topic, but if anyone is finding it through web search like I did:

  • It’s a built-in behavior of iex.
  • It’s not configurable (not part of the available IEx.configure options, see IEx — IEx v1.18.3).
  • The cursor only looks like it’s jumping, if you type it still behaves as if the cursor has not moved.

According to this post, this behavior is from the Erlang shell, and is unlikely to change:

Guess I’ll just have to train my brain to ignore it as well as it can. ^^

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5

Wow, this thread brought back some memories.

This feature used to annoy the hell out of me… but I haven’t noticed it since forever.

I assure you, you’ll get used to it.

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