I tried to customize R completion in my .inputrc like this: $if RCustomCompletion Control-q: "q(save=\"no\")\n" $endif I looked in the R source to find about RCustomCompletion BUBBA$ grep -r 'rl_readline_name' * src/unix/sys-std.c: rl_readline_name = "RCustomCompletion"; but this poster: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-September/173828.html sounds like he found the same information in the docs somewhere. But it doesn't seem to work. Setting the exact same binding globally (i.e. not in an $if) gives the desired result. Other applications seem to work about as expected, for example the following workaround gives the desired result for the programs I use regularly: Control-q: "q(save=\"no\")\n" $if Bash Control-q: "\C-d" $endif $if bc Control-q: "\C-d" $endif $if perldb Control-q: "\C-d" $endif Britton