I’m posting this info because I had a hard time searching for it on the internet.
if you are using rxvt (or urxvt), and you want escape sequences to work as in xterm, you need to specify them in your .Xdefaults.
here are the codes I had to add to have vim working properly on rxvt (I use alt-left_arrow and alt-right_arrow to navigate through tabs):
*Rxvt*meta8: false
*Rxvt.keysym.C-Left: +033[1;5D
*Rxvt.keysym.C-Right: +033[1;5C
*Rxvt.keysym.M-Left: +033[1;3D
*Rxvt.keysym.M-Right: +033[1;3C
(substitute “+” with “\”)
enjoy!
