Bash/Readline vi line editing mode doesn't work in Screen

Question

I have set -o vi in my ~/.profile, and it works fine on the regular console and under Tmux. But when I run Screen, if I press Escape or ^[, I get a visual bell, the next key I press seems to get eaten by something, and then I'm still in Insert mode in Bash. How do I tell Screen to pass the ^[ on to the shell? (Or, alternately, is there something I can do in .inputrc that will allow me to use a different key combo to enter command mode?)

Answer 1

If you switch to vi-editing mode via set -o vi in your .profile, this won't be passed into the screen's shell, because the screen's shell isn't a login shell and thus doesn't read .profile.

You need to put the following into your .inputrc

set editing-mode vi