how do I translate a key code to a string?

ah, (message "%c" code) works

I'm now getting an error when trying to jack in with cider.

[nREPL] Starting server via /usr/local/bin/lein update-in :dependencies conj \[nrepl\ \"0.6.0\"\] -- update-in :plugins conj \[cider/cider-nrepl\ \"0.22.0-beta1\"\] -- repl :headless :host localhost...
error in process sentinel: nrepl-server-sentinel: Could not start nREPL server: /usr/local/bin/lein: line 224: type: java: not found
Leiningen couldn't find 'java' executable, which is required.

java -version works fine too. and the clj tools

I get this suggestion: Please either set JAVA_CMD or put java (>=1.6) in your $PATH (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/sbin:/bin). but my actual $PATH command gives me this:

λ ~ : $PATH
-bash: /home/chaselambert/jdk-11.0.3+7/bin:/home/chaselambert/graalvm-ce-19.0.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:

I solved it by reinstalling the exec-path-from-shell package. Not sure why my emacs needs that (I think the package is mostly for Mac folks) as I'm on linux but whatevs