How can I map Alt-< or Alt->?

Question

I try to create a mapping for Alt < and Alt >:

inoremap <M-<> foo-bar-baz
inoremap <M->> baz-bar-foo

This doesn't work, most probably because < and > are themselves characters used to define the mapping. So, how can I create such a mapping?

Answer 1

As said in my comment, the <Alt-X> combination insert a special character. So instead of mapping to <Alt-X>, you can map it to the special character.

So

inoremap <M-<> foo-bar-baz
inoremap <M->> baz-bar-foo

becomes

inoremap ¯ foo-bar-baz
inoremap ˘ baz-bar-foo

Note : This was working on a Mac, on iterm2, tmux and macvim. The behaviour may change depending the configuration ...

Edit : You can look at those posts :

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5379837/is-it-possible-to-mapping-alt-hjkl-in-insert-mode
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7501092/can-i-map-alt-key-in-vim