Linux vi arrow keys broken in insert mode

Question

My arrow keys don\'t work in vi in insert mode at home, they just each insert a newline and a capital letter, like \'A\'. Is there a way to fix that?

Answer 1

Ubuntu ships default with vim-tiny, which doesn't have all the bells and whistles that vim has.

Do a quick sudo apt-get install vim to get all the juicy features that everyone's talking about.

Answer 2

Yet another variation: this problem appeared for me after some .vimrc changes. A concerted search eventually revealed that my clever re-mapping of ESC in normal mode was not a good idea. Removing it solved the problem:

" this is NOT something you want in .vimrc:
" In normal mode, hitting Esc turns off search highlights:
nmap <ESC> :nohl<CR>  " Do NOT add this to .vimrc

Answer 3

I had the same issue while using vim inside Windows 8.1 with Cygwin.

Solution worked for me is, just run the following command in your Cygwin terminal:

cp vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc

Answer 4

In the command line write this:

EXINIT="set nocompatible"; export EXINIT

Answer 5

The only thing that worked for me was ":set term=ansi"