You can assign codes to a bare F-key or an F-key with a single modifier (Shift, Control, or Option). If needed, you can configure Terminal to send whatever codes your termcap/terminfo is expecting (at least I can in the 10.4 Terminal). The ‘F keys’ are (usually) mapped in a VT-220 style that the xterm-color termcap/terminfo entries know how to parse (F1-F4/F5 may be in a VT-100 style though!). You will probably have better luck mapping query-replace-regexp to a key (combination) that actually transmits something. Since most terminal emulation programs emulate a VT-100 (and its successors, including the VT-102 and the VT-220), there is no way to actually send a Control- Shift- 5 (or whatever C-% is on your keyboard) to a terminal-based program. Back when terminals were real hardware (not just emulated by programs like Terminal and xterm), terminals like DEC's VT-100 had a Control key, but it only worked in combination with certain other keys. Unlike GUI-based apps, terminal-based apps (like almost all of those that you run inside Terminal windows) are limited in which key combinations they can sense.

However, I experimented in Emacs with 'xterm' and 'xterm-color', and either way I have the same problem with C-M-%. I did that for reasons unrelated to this question (to prevent my colored prompt from looking funny after I cancel a reverse-i-search). For example, I can use alt-B and alt-F to go forward and back one word at a time in bash and Emacs.ĮDIT 2: I would also like to mention that I have my terminal set to declare the terminal type as 'xterm' rather than the default of 'xterm-color'. I can do it by typing M-x query-replace-regexp, and when I do that, I see a reminder on the bottom of the screen saying I can also do it with C-M-%, but when I try C-M-%, nothing happens.ĮDIT: I would like to add that I have the 'Use option as meta key' terminal option enabled, and it seems to work fine. However, when I do that, it doesn't work. Please correct me if I am wrong, since I am only starting to learn Emacs). As far as I know, this can be done by pressing C-M-% (I am assumimg this means Ctrl+Alt+Shift+5. I am trying to do a regular expression search-and-replace in Emacs, running in the Terminal program on my MacBook Pro, which is running OS X 10.6.2.

Query and replace aquamacs