this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Programming

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Ctl-U to delete everything on the line before cursor.

Ctl-E to skip to end of line.

Ctl-A to skip to beginning of line.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Or, just use Home and End like they were intended! Kids these days….

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Kids these days….

These Ctrl keys are shortcuts from Emacs - there's a Bash settings to switch to vi-mode if you so wish. Anyway, the first Emacs was written in 1981, probably on a PDP-11, which did not have Home and End! Same reason Neovim uses "yank" instead of "copy". ctrl-c/ctrl-v did not exist as a shortcut back when vi was being written!

I know you didn't intend to be mean or anything, but maaaaaan kids these days don't know their history (not entirely your fault, btw)😆

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

This tip is super useful to me because not everyone is using a PC. On a PC sure, I would use the Home and End keys all the time. Now I'm using a laptop as my main computer and the Home and End keys are in a weird position that even to this day, 4ish years of laptop use, I still have to actually look at the keys to find them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

That's horrible for muscle memory, every time I switch desk/keyboard I have to re-learn the position of the home/end/delete/PgUp/PgDn keys.

I got used to Ctrl-a / Ctrl-e and it became second nature, my hands don't have to fish for extra keys, to the point that it becomes annoying when a program does not support that. Some map Ctrl-a to "Select all" so, for input fields where the selection is one line, I'd rather Ctrl-a then left/right to go to the beginning/end than fish for home/end, wherever they are.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ctrl-y to paste what Ctrl-u deleted or cut

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

That's a new one for me. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If you're a VIM motions fan, you can always install the zsh-vi-mode: https://github.com/jeffreytse/zsh-vi-mode.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

ctrl-b: move cursor back one character

ctrl-f: move cursor foward one character

ctrl-d: delete character under cursor

[–] lmaydev 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But that's more key presses than just using existing keys

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I find it easier using my pinky to hit ctrl than taking my fingers off the home row to use the arrow keys.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
  • Alt-delete deletes the whole word before cursor
  • Alt-d deletes the whole word after cursor
  • Ctrl-k deletes (kill) everything after the cursor

Whatever is deleted is stored in the "killring" and can be pasted(yanked) back with Ctrl-y (like someone else already mentioned), consecutive uses of Alt-delete/Alt-d add to the killring.

  • Alt-b / Alt-f moves one word backwards / forwards
  • Alt-t swaps (translocates) the current word with the previous one
  • Ctrl-_ undo last edit operation

All those bindings are the same as in emacs.

Also, normally Ctrl-d inserts the end-of-file character, and typically can be used to close an active shell session or when you have some other interpreter open in the terminal for interactive input.