Ctrl+Space in Powershell Core produces double quote character

[jwefers]

Environment

Windows build number:  10.0.19041.0
Windows Terminal version (if applicable): 1.0.1402.0 (Preview from Store)
Locale: ENG language, DE keyboard (German)

Any other software?
Powershell Core 7.0.1, 7.1.0-preview.3

Steps to reproduce

Having a german keyboard, open PowerShell Core in Windows Terminal. Start with e.g. Get-, then Ctrl+Space.

Also, do the same for normal Windows Powershell 5.1.xxx

Expected behavior

The autocomplete Menu as it works in normal Powershell terminal shows up.

Actual behavior

In PS Core: double quote character is typed
In PS: nothing happens, but apparently, the terminal (? console host?) is registering something, as if i repeat it rapidly, the cursor does not blink but stays until i stop
(In WSL, also nothing happens, also registers something)

[zadjii-msft]

I'm hoping this will just magically go away with all the work that's been done for #4999 in Terminal 1.1.

[jwefers]

Ah, i read that thread and what made me open this defect was your remark:

that is should already be fixed

[jwefers]

What i just discover: The very same issue (" being typed), happens in the VS Code terminal:

not your turf probably but coincidence?

[DHowett]

So, this is definitely our turf (unfortunately!). We own the translation layer that VSCode is using, and it's the same one as in Windows Terminal.

Ctrl+Space gets encoded as NUL, and on the receiving end we ... translate that to Ctrl+Shif+2

Powershell treats this the same as Shift+2.

So, a little more info about terminals.

The don't really communicate in keys and modifiers and all that. They communicate in control characters or character sequences start are introduced with U+001B ESCAPE. Unfortunately, a number of different keys map to the same thing.

NUL is one of those encodings with multiple keys. Ctrl+Space and Ctrl+Shift+2 both encode to the same byte. When we try to go back from "byte" to "what keys was the user pressing at the time" we get the wrong one.

We cannot fix this in the general case. However, we recently landed #4999 which improves the fidelity of keyboard input for all consumers (opt-in!) by giving them raw access to the literal keys that were pressed.

With 4999, and with Terminal preview 1.1, Ctrl+Space comes out as Ctrl+Space and Ctrl+Shift+2 comes out as Ctrl+Shift+2.

/dup #4999

😄