The bash shell has a very rich set of convenient shortcuts. This ability to edit the command line is provided by the GNU Readline library.

Readline keybindings are taken from the Emacs text editor.

In these notes:

• C-a: stands for press Ctrl plus the a key
• A-a: stands for press Alt plus the a key

Emacs mode

Moving around

Keys	Action
C-a	Go to the beginning of the line (begin)
C-e	Go to the end of the line (end)
C-b	Back one character (left arrow)
C-f	Forward one character (right arrow)
A-b	Backward one word
A-f	Forward one word
C-xx	Toggle between two positions

Editing

Keys	Action
C-l	Clear the screen, similar to the clear command
A-Del	Cut the word before the cursor (excluded)
A-d	Cut the word after the cursor (included)
C-h	Delete character before the cursor
C-d	Delete character under the cursor
C-w	Cut the word before the cursor
C-k	Cut the line after the cursor (included)
C-u	Cut the line before the cursor (excluded)
C-y	Paste the last cutted thing being cut (yank)
A-t	Swap current word with previous
C-t	Swap the character under the cursor with the previous one
A-c	Capitalize the character under the cursor and move to end of word
A-u	Makes uppercase from cursor to end of word
A-l	Makes lowercase from cursor to end of word
C-_	Undo
A-r	Cancel the changes and restore the original line
Tab	Completion for file/directory names

History

Keys	Action
C-r	Recall a previous command. Keep searching backward for matches by pressing C-r again
C-p	Previous command in history (up arrow)
C-n	Next command (down arrow)
C-s	Go back to the most recent command
C-o	Execute the command found via C-r or C-s
C-g	Escape from history searching mode
!!	Repeat the last command
!abc	Run the last command starting with abc
!abc:p	Print the last command starting with abc
!$	Last argument of previous command
!$:p	Print the last argument of previous command
!\*	All arguments or the previous command
!\*:p	Print all arguments or the previous command
^ab^cde	Run previous command, replacing ab with cde

Process control

Keys	Action
C-c	Interrupt/kill the current foreground running program (SIGINT)
C-z	Stop/sleep the current running foreground program
C-d	EOF, close the terminal
C-s	Stops output to the screen
C-q	Allows output to the screen

Vi mode

To use Vi mode in Bash and any other tool that uses GNU Readline, you need only to put the following line in your .inputrc file:

    set editing-mode vi

If you only want to use this mode just in Bash, an alternative is to put the following line in your .bashrc file.

    set -o vi

References

• Readline documentation
• Readline on Wikipedia