Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

Post by Too » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 5:00 AM UTC

motoboi wrote: post #24

stuaxo wrote: post #15

"Shame, then, that even serious command line hackers never bother learning about its capabilities, as they can supercharge your command line productivity." Because it is really confusing if you are not an emacs user.

Not at all. bash readline is probably the productivity enhancer skill a developer (or system admin) can develop. Simple things like copy and paste without hitting a mouse. This will make you _prefer_ the cli as it is not slowing you down anymore.

Post by vanous » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

olau wrote: post #58

ordu wrote: post #27

> C-e, C-f, M-b, M-f Why these strange shortcuts when any keyboard has arrow keys and they can be used with a control modifier to move by words? I can understand why to use C-a, C-e, because laptop keyboards tend to have "Home" and "End" keys in strange places, but those... And Emacs documentation for some reason insists on using C-e, C-f instead of arrow keys.

C-f(orwards) C-b(ackwards) The reason you use them is that they allow you to not leave the home row. So say you're writing something and need to move back and delete a mistype, it's much faster to do that with C-b C-b C-b backspace M-f than moving your right hand to the arrow keys and moving it back to type the letter and then moving it to the arrow keys again. Now, lot's of people can't be bothered to take the time…

Post by dolmen » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:04 AM UTC

CodeIsTheEnd wrote: post #25

For anyone using a Mac, the basic cursor movement commands available in readline and emacs—C-f, C-b, C-a, C-e, C-n, C-p—are also available in virtually any text input in any program, namely web browser inputs, url bars, and textareas, as well as all system UIs. Once you get used to using these shortcuts that means you can compose and edit text anywhere without ever moving your hands. I recently switched to using Linu…

Post by jbaber » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

heleninboodler wrote: post #114

asicsp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by far the most useful shortcut for me is Ctrl-r I rarely ever use Ctrl-r since I usually know the starting part of the command I want. So, I type those starting characters and use up/down arrow keys, courtesy these lines in `~/.inputrc` "\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward

a really cool hack I found in an HN thread long ago was to stick "hashtags" (aka bash end-of-line comments) at the ends of commands you want to find in your history quickly: sudo systemctl restart myservice #bounce and then ctrl-r and type your hashtag to get right to it

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

petepete wrote: post #84

Less Useful Key Bindings: C-l Clear screen This is the one I use most frequently. All day every day. I hate clutter and unless I need to refer to the output from the previous commands, it's gone.