Why do I have to type '^' plus the next character two times?

When I type the char '^' in order to raise something I have to type 2 times the next char to get just one.I would like to know how can I stop this behaviour. I'm using Matlab for Mac

[Guillaume]

I would suspect that it's something to do with your keyboard or some particular setting in your OS. It's certainly not normal behaviour. Does the same happen in other programs?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

This behavior is perfectly normal.

It depends solely on your language and keyboard settings. Some keyboards use the ^ key (and others) as a "dead key", which typically adds a diacritic to the following letter character:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key

So in order to get the ^ character itself, it is required to press it twice, basically as a kind of "escape" of that dead key (similar to escape characters used in many programming languages).

You can find a list of keyboards with dead keys here:

http://kbdlayout.info/features/deadkeys

and I bet that your language is one of them. You might even find some other dead keys to play with.

"I would like to know how can I stop this behaviour"

The simplest solution is to change the keyboard language for one that does not use dead keys for common programming characters. Several of my colleagues program using the US English keyboard layout, entirely from memory! See also:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/112822-when-coding-why-does-matlab-prevent-me-from-writting-without-waiting-for-the-next-character

[Alvaro Moure]

Thank you very much for taking the time to write this. I‘m really greatful, problem solved!

Answer 2

[madhan ravi]

It's wierd better contact the mathworks support team by clicking the Contact Us button on the top right corner of this page.