Gotcha: SXHKD doesn't like comments (in bindings)

I've written before about my usage of the BSPWM tiling window manager, which goes hand in hand with Simple X HotKey Daemon (SXHKD).

I noticed earlier that while trying to set a SXHKD binding, I suddenly stopped being able to trigger the creation of a window via the keybinding.

For instance, with the following binding:

super + shift + d
	# Next float via https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/08/15/bspwm-next-float/
	bspc rule -a '*' -o state=floating; kitty

I was finding that SXHKD silently didn't respond to the keypress, nor could I see anything when running the sxhkd daemon interactively.

It appears that it was due to the location of the comment, and the following diff fixed it:

+# Next float via https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/08/15/bspwm-next-float/
 super + shift + d
-	# Next float via https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/08/15/bspwm-next-float/
 	bspc rule -a '*' -o state=floating; kitty

Once this was done, it was able to run correctly. This is another subtle reminder for me not to treat it as a shell script being executed!

Written by Jamie Tanna's profile image Jamie Tanna on , and last updated on .

Content for this article is shared under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International, and code is shared under the Apache License 2.0.

#blogumentation #sxhkd.

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