Unable to bind anything to pipe symbol using keyname

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 22:41:51 +0000

I would like to have <Mod>+| bound to "split h". I believe that the following line in `.i3/config` should be what's required: bindsym $mod+Shift+bar split h ('bar' being the name shown in xev when I hit the pipe key on my UK layout keyboard. However, when I have the above line in my `.i3/config`, I receive the following error: ERROR: CONFIG: syntax error, unexpected bar, expecting or or '+' When I use the keycode instead: bindsym $mod+Shift+94 Then everything works as expected. Is 'bar' being treated as a reserved word by the i3 config parser? Is there a way to achieve this behaviour without resorting to keycodes?

Answer by Adaephon for

I would like to have <Mod>+| bound to "split h". I believe that the following line in .i3/config should be what's required:

bindsym $mod+Shift+bar split h

('bar' being the name shown in xev when I hit the pipe key on my UK layout keyboard. However, when I have the above line in my .i3/config, I receive the following error:

ERROR: CONFIG: syntax error, unexpected bar, expecting <number> or <word> or '+'

When I use the keycode instead:

bindsym $mod+Shift+94

Then everything works as expected. Is 'bar' being treated as a reserved word by the i3 config parser? Is there a way to achieve this behaviour without resorting to keycodes?

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 12:13:34 +0000

First of: When I tested `bindsym $mod+Shift+bar split h` just now, it worked for me (with version 4.6.1-1+g4.6-88-ge99158e from build.i3wm.org), so there may be another problem in your configuration that is not actually located at 'bar'. That aside, as far as I can tell, '|' is on the '\'-key just right of Left-Shift on UK-QWERTY. So you actually type +\ to get a '|'. Therefore bindsym $mod+Shift+backslash split h should work in the expected way. (For me either - 'bar' or 'backslash' - works exactly the same way) This works for me, too: bindsym $mod+bar split h So the 'Shift' seems to be redundant.

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Unable to bind anything to pipe symbol using keyname