Becoming Productive In Bash Using The Keyboard Shortcuts

Submitted by sudheer on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 00:02

Moving around

You can use the arrow keys on keyboard to move around in the command line. Bash also provides convenient keyboard short cuts to navigate effectively. Try them out and see for yourself.

To become a Bash pro user you have to get yourself familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. Once you do, you'll find yourself productive.

CTRL+b	move backward one character
CTRL+f	move forward one character
ESC+b	move one word backward
ESC+f	move one word forward
CTRL+a	move to beginning of line
CTRL+e	move to end of line
CTRL+p	move to previous line
CTRL+n	move to next line
ESC+<	move to first line of history list
ESC+>	move to last line of history list

Moving around words using ESC+f and ESC+b are my favourites in this list. Jumping to first and last lines of the history list is also useful.

Deleting And Undeleting

Bash provides convenient keyboard short cuts for deleting and retrieving the last deleted item.

CTRL+d	delete one character forward
ESC+d	delete one word forward
CTRL+k	delete forward to end of line
CTRL+u	delete the line from the beginning to point
CTRL+y	retrieve last item deleted

Searching

CTRL+r

search backward

When you hit CTRL+r the prompt change to
(reverse-i-search)`':
Type the first few characters of the command you have entered before, Bash completes the command line for you.

Changing Case

ESC+c	Capitalize word after point
ESC+u	Change word after point to all capital letters
ESC+l	Change word after point to all lowercase letters

This is especially useful, when your caps lock is accidentally on and you type something without realizing it. Without the short cut to change case, you would turn caps lock off, delete the characters you accidentally typed in upper case and then type them again. Now you are empowered with ESC+l.

Miscellaneous

CTRL+l	clear screen
CTRL+d	logout or close the terminal window
CTRL+c	cancel the currently running program or command

Spend some time with these keyboard short cuts. Become a productive Bash user.

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About the author

Sudheer is an entrepreneur and software developer. Get more from Sudheer on Twitter.

Readline shortcuts

Submitted by Noufal Ibrahim (not verified) on Sun, 11/21/2010 - 16:19.

Many of the editing shortcuts you've mentioned are provided by readline and are common for many GNU programs. They are by default the Emacs keys. You can do a `set -o vi` to make it use vi keystrokes instead.

thanks for the tip

Submitted by sudheer on Sun, 11/21/2010 - 16:31.

Exactly.

I love when the same keystrokes work in MySQL console, PostgreSQL console, Python interpretor and many other programs.

And don't forget repetition

Submitted by Steve Jorgensen (not verified) on Sat, 04/09/2011 - 03:26.

ESC+ repeats the next letter or command (digit) times.

If you have your caps lock key remapped, and you want to upper-case a variable name with underscores or something, you can capitalize the entire thing with 4 keystrokes. If my variable was typed as my_funky_constant, and I need that in all upper case, and I am on the first character, I can simply type 3u .

Damnit, that screwed up my entry

Submitted by Steve Jorgensen (not verified) on Sat, 04/09/2011 - 03:27.

that's ESC+3+ESC+u

I tried to put angle brackets in my post, and that didn't work.

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