I’ve been using this feature for years now, and it is surprizing that not many xterm users are aware of it.
When one double-clicks in xterm, a “word” is selected. By default, one gets selection like this: http://blog.tobez.org/, if one double-clicks on an e there. This is OK for some usage patterns, but suboptimal for many others. Fortunately, it is possible to override xterm’s notion of what to select, by using a charClass resource.
I have the following in my .Xdefaults file:
XTerm*charClass: 33:48,36-38:48,43-47:48,58:48,61:48,63-64:48,126:48
Admittedly, this is a bit cryptic. That’s probably why this feature is so underused.
So please, go and read the “CHARACTER CLASSES” section in the xterm manual page, and tinker until satisfied.
Oh and by the way, this is a sole single thing which made me switch from rxvt and its various clones back to xterm.
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Outstanding! Thanks a lot.
Nice point about word def. Other useful tips like triple clicking and selection extension using the 3-button are described in the xterm man page under "POINTER USAGE".
i've been using the same feature in Eterm for years, i just switched back to xterm for some reasons ... and i was looking for this. if you want you can set this var WORDCHARS='*?_-[]=&;!#$%^(){}<>.' (zsh) to navigate delete words.
thx.