Arrow and M-n M-p don't work with company mode in terminal when ESC aborts completion

Question

In a terminal window, I'm finding that company-mode completion doesn't work, whereas it does work in a graphical window. For example a down arrow inserts the text OB and M-n simply inserts n.

As a workaround, I've followed this answer to use C-n and C-p like so

(with-eval-after-load 'company
  (define-key company-active-map (kbd "C-n") #'company-select-next)
  (define-key company-active-map (kbd "C-p") #'company-select-previous))

but I'd prefer to use the same keys whether I'm running graphically or via ssh.

This used to work, and I've upgraded my configuration files and installed a lot more packages recently, but even reducing my initialization file down to just the company mode code didn't fix the problem.

Edit: I've isolated the problem down to this line of code that I copied from the graphene package that redefines ESC to abort the completion.

 (define-key company-active-map (kbd "ESC") 'company-abort)

I can see how this might stop M-n and M-p working because ESC has got something to do with the Alt key in emacs. I can workaround the problem in a terminal using

(if (display-graphic-p)
    (with-eval-after-load 'company
      (define-key company-active-map (kbd "ESC") 'company-abort)))

which means that single ESC aborts completion in a graphical frame, and triple ESC aborts in a terminal.

However is it still be possible for the arrow keys to work with single ESC? My preference is to use arrow keys and single escape if possible.

Answer 1

You have fallen victim to the limitations of terminal control sequences.

• <escape> actually sends C-[
• M-f actually sends C-[ f
• <up> actually sends C-[ [ A

Becuase <escape> is a prefix of M-f, you can't really bind it. This is not entirely true. You can still bind it using timers that determine whether <escape> is a command or a prefix, but I don't recommend using it.

Long term, C-g is the better solution. It's standardized and should work everywhere in Emacs.