Meta and # in a UK mac terminal

Question

In the mac terminal application there is a setting (preferences -> keyboard) that lets you set "use option as meta key". This is useful as a lot of unix boxes use bash as default shell and that has emacs keybindings M-f and M-b that let you skip words.

Problem is that on a Mac with a UK keyboard the # symbol is tricky to get to - normally it can be typed with alt-3, but not if you are in a terminal and alt=meta.

Anyone have a nice way round this?

Answer 1

ESC is another meta shortcut :). You don't have to keep pressing it though.

So in your situation, you might just need to press ESC once, and then press alt-3.

Answer 2

Set your keyboard language ( System Preferences->International->InputMenu ) to Australian

It is the same as UK except shift-3 gives #. You do lose the pound sign but if I do currency I use the ISO three character code GBP

Answer 3

I made a small patch for iTerm, that allows you to split the functionality of Option keys - for example, left will be Meta, right will allow you to enter any special characters your keyboard layout may require. Patch, binary and the story available here