Home/End keys do not work in tmux
In tmux 2.0, you can just add these 2 lines in your .tmux.conf:
bind -n End send-key C-e
bind -n Home send-key C-a
It appears the main problem is with using xterm-256color for $TERM. I switched $TERM to screen-256color and the problem went away.
If you want to stay with xterm-256color in tmux for some reason - use arch solution with inputrc. I tested it in tmux with rxvt, ruby irb, python, lua and home/end keys are ok. Probably every readline app will be ok.
From the arch wiki:
First things first:
do not set $TERM manually - let the terminal do it.
Many command line applications use the Readline library to read input. So properly configuring Readline can fix Home and End in many cases.
the default /etc/inputrc file does not include a mapping for home/end keys.
To check what the emitted escape sequence for these keys is:
1. Ctrl + V
2. Home
3. Spacebar
4. Ctrl + V
5. End
this will probably print: $ ^[[1~ ^[[4~. So you have to add a mapping for these sequences to your inputrc (/etc/inputrc to be globally, or only for your user ~/.inputrc):
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line
Add the following to your .tmux.conf:
bind-key -n Home send Escape "OH"
bind-key -n End send Escape "OF"
And you're done!
Explanation
After attempting each one of these, and several others I saw while perusing other answers and documentation, this finally worked for me in every scenario I threw at it. I can't promise the same for you, because everyone's scenarios are different, but this is what I ended up with.
This was discovered after introducing the same trial/error and logic from a somewhat relevant article that is no longer available. The key is where the translation is occurring; in my case, this happens within my .tmux.conf, rather than .bashrc or .zshrc (mainly because my home/end worked fine outside of tmux)
Debugging
You can debug this issue by using cat -v.
Run cat -v, then press the Home and End keys. Exit using Ctrl+C.
$ cat -v
Here's what my output looked like within tmux using zsh, zsh, and bash:
tmux
➜ ~ cat -v
^[[1~^[[4~^C
zsh
➜ ~ cat -v
^[[H^[[F
bash
bash-3.2$ cat -v
^[[H^[[F
Solutioning
Compare the above examples to what we're expecting to see, by pairing tput with cat -v:
$ tput khome | cat -v; echo
^[OH
$ tput kend | cat -v; echo
^[OF
Conclusion
Because this problem exists solely within tmux, and not within the shells themselves, I opted to make the bind changes within the tmux configuration instead. By using bind-key paired with send, we can use the Escape keyword paired with the sequence we want to achieve our translation. Thus:
bind-key -n NAME_OF_KEY send Escape SEQUENCE_GOES_HERE
This debugging and solutioning process can be applied to any other key translation issues. But, don't go too crazy. Some keys are mapped to certain escape sequences for a reason. Notice how bash and zsh received the ^[[H sequence for Home instead of ^[OH; it's probably not recommended we override this in our .zshrc unless we're having major issues with this in zsh.