title: Disable beep / system bell in MSYS
body: <p>In trying to switch from Cygwin to MSYS, I'd really like to have MSYS beep / system bell <em>completely disabled</em>. Sources<sup><a href="http://philwilson.org/blog/2009/02/disable-system-bell-in-msys/" rel="noreferrer">[1]</a></sup> suggest modifying <code>~/.inputrc</code> to include</p>
  
  <pre><code>set bell-style none
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but this only <em>partially</em> disables the beep&mdash;it only affects the shell! So sure, typing backspace on an empty line in <code>bash</code> becomes silent but try scrolling up too far in <code>less</code>. It beeps.</p>
  
  <p>In fact, there are other threads on the MinGW list asking how to disable beeps in other software like Octave<sup><a href="http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Octave-Msys-Beep-Disable-on-WIndows-td4656885.html" rel="noreferrer">[2]</a></sup>. But none of them address a way to disable the beep on a system level affecting all MSYS utilities.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I'm not too familiar with the details of the stack (terminal emulator, etc.) from <code>bash</code> to the console window and how it differs between Cygwin and MSYS.  I'm using the standard Windows console (rather than a terminal emulator like MinTTY) in both environments, and I've observed that when the beep occurs in Cygwin (on Windows 7), it uses the system's &ldquo;ding&rdquo; sound. This is consistent between all Cygwin utilities so (I'm guessing) something must be fundamentally different in the Cygwin stack causing all system bells to behave this way. Where this difference lies between the Cygwin and MSYS stacks, I do not know, and am hoping to get clarification.</p>