Keyboard shortcuts

Editing Shortcuts

Shortcut Description
Ctrl + a —> move to the beginning of the line
Ctrl + e —> move to the end of the line
Ctrl + k —> Kill the text from the current cursor position to the end of the line.
Ctrl + u —> Kill the text from the current cursor position to the beginning of the line
Ctrl + w —> Kill the word behind the current cursor position
Alt + b —> move backward one word
Alt + f —> move forward one word
Ctrl + Alt + e —> shell expand line
Ctrl + y —> Yank the most recently killed text back into the buffer at the cursor.
Alt + y —> Rotate through killed text. You can only do this if the prior command is Ctrl + y or

Killing text will delete text, but save it so that the user can reinsert it by yanking. Similar to cut and paste except thatthe text is placed on a kill ring which allows for storing more than one set of text to be yanked back on to the command line.

Recall Shortcuts

Shortcut Description
Ctrl + r —> search the history backwards
Ctrl + p —> previous command in history
Ctrl + n —> next command in history
Ctrl + g —> quit history searching mode
Alt + . —> use the last word of the previous command repeat to get the last word of the previous + 1 command
Alt + n Alt + . —> use the nth word of the previous command
!! + Return —> execute the last command again (useful when you forgot sudo !!)

Macros

Shortcut Description
Ctrl + x , ( —> start recording a macro
Ctrl + x , ) —> stop recording a macro
Ctrl + x , e —> execute the last recorded macro

Custome Key Bindings

With the bind command it is possible to define custom key bindings.

The next example bind an Alt + w to >/dev/null 2>&1:

bind '"\ew"':"\" >/dev/null 2>&1\""

If you want to execute the line immediately add \C-m ( Enter ) to it:

bind '"\ew"':"\" >/dev/null 2>&1\C-m\""

Job Control

Shortcut Description
Ctrl + c —> Stop the current job
Ctrl + z —> Suspend the current job (send a SIGTSTP signal)