Roland Schmitt wrote:

> But can you type [,],{ and }?
>
>I don't know if this is only a problem related to windows. The brackets can only typed when irb is used without readline.
>  
>
 From a readline README:

    For a standard US keyboard the built in key handling should cover
    Windows arrows, begin, end and shift-insert keys. In
    examples/Inputrc.kbger I provide a few extras for the German
    keyboard layout.

    Readline-4.0 will look for an INPUTRC environment variable. If not
    found it will use .inputrc as the basename of its initialization
    file. Readline will look for this file in the directory specified by
    the environment variable HOME or if not set in the current
    directory. If it cannot find the init file and if
    registry access is enabled it will ask for the <inputrc-file> value
    of the <HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Free Software
    Foundation\libreadline> key. For history readline will access the
    <history-file> value of above registry key if the environment
    variable HOME is not set. On failure it will resort to the current
    directory.

I can't seem to find Inputrb.kbger, but here's a few starting places for 
your German inputrc.

http://www.robertkehl.de/?page=/linux/inputrc.php
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:CZCsMNvmgQAJ:www.mova.org/~lowry/dotinputrc.html+readline+german+inputrc&hl=en

_why