#1105213 rxvt-unicode: pasting multiple lines eats all newlines

Package:
rxvt-unicode
Source:
rxvt-unicode
Description:
RXVT-like terminal emulator with Unicode and 256-color support
Submitter:
Roland Hieber
Date:
2025-05-13 17:24:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1105213#5
Date:
2025-05-13 13:01:51 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

After updating rxvt-unicode from 9.30-2+b4 (bookworm) to 9.31-3+b2 (current
testing), pasting multiple lines results in all newlines being replaces by
whitespace, so everything is squashed together on one line only.

Steps to reproduce:

* Run 'xrdb -remove' to remove all user-specific configuration
* Start a new terminal instance by running 'urxvt'
* In the new urxvt window, run 'cat' and paste multiple lines, either from the
  middle mouse button, or from the clipboard via Ctrl-Alt-V. Urxvt first asks if
  I really want to paste control characters (which is expected since the
  clipboard contains several \n, which it also shows as '\n' in the preview line
  below the prompt). When then pressing 'y', the pasted text is inserted in the
  terminal, but all newlines in the pasted text are replaced by whitespace.

As a control, I tried inspecting the clipboard with 'xclip -o', which shows that
the clipboard or mouse selection indeed contains newlines. Pasting the clipboard
or mouse selection in an xterm window also inserts the text with all newlines
left intact.

#1105213#10
Date:
2025-05-13 17:14:23 UTC
From:
To:
As I just learned, this is expected behaviour, and the paste prompt in v9.31 got
another option, "p", which pastes the clipboard as-is without replacing any
control characters by whitespaces. I could not find any documentation for this
feature, maybe it is worth an entry in NEWS.debian? Otherwise this bug can be
closed.

By the way, when I tried to "debug" this issue, I noticed that the current
version tag, debian/9.31-3, is missing in the Salsa Git repo.

Thanks, and sorry for the noise,

 - Roland