Option-click to move cursor in REPLs outside the shell

[jvns]

On Mac OS, Option-click will move the cursor when in the shell, which I believe works through shell integration. As far as I can tell, this only works in the shell, not in other REPLs (like python etc)

In iTerm, Option-click will move the cursor in any REPL, which I think is cool. From experimenting a bit, it seems like when you Option-click, iTerm will generate escape codes corresponding to arrow keys, which moves the cursor. This approach is definitely kind of limited (it doesn't seem to work when you're editing something multiline for example).

For example here's what happens if you try to do it in cat (where of course the trick doesn't work, so you can see the escape codes):

$ cat
aaaa^[[D^[[D