Linux command line most useful keyboard shortcuts
Sat, 12 Feb 2011 11:15:17 +0000
I don't like when computer limits my performance. When some "manual" process is slower that my thinking process it's a very frustrating situation. That's why I love command line and keyboard shortcuts (versus GUI and mouse based interfaces).
Under Linux we have readline library that implements command line editing with history and many other useful features.
First: allow to effectively search history by prefix (just enter some text and pressing UP/DOWN keys to select commands starting with that string):
~/.inputrc "\e[A":history-search-backward "\e[B":history-search-forward
Then some shortcuts that may be useful (I assume you have at least cursor keys on your terminal, so filtering them out from full list):
- Moving around
- CTRL+a: beginning of line
- CTRL+b: end of line
- ALT+b: one word left
- ALT+f: one word right
- Copy/Paste
- CTRL+k: cut to end of line
- CTRL+u: cut to beginning of line
- CTRL+w: delete word
- CTRL+y: paste at cursor position ("yank" in Emacs terminology)
- Completion
- TAB: complete current text (bash uses filesystem contents here)