Hey!
Recently found out that there are some quite awesome shortcuts available that I've missed - extremely useful if you use the bash shell in *Nix.
To see which one you are using you can type 'chsh' in a terminal - this will tell you if you are using /bin/bash.
Go try them out! This can speed up your work in the terminal incredibly.
** Updated 2011-04-05 - there are many moooore! See this little link: faqshttp://www.faqs.org/docs/bashman/bashref_93.html#SEC100
You can see the bindings by typing "bind -P"
The easier shortcuts
| Ctrl + A | Go to the beginning of the line you are currently typing on. Extremely useful in those scenarios when left/right arrow keys do not work. Same as HOME button. |
| Ctrl + E | Go to the end of the line you are currently typing on. Same as END button. |
| Ctrl + L | Clears the Screen, same as the clear command. |
| Ctrl + U | Clears the line before the cursor position. If you are at the end of the line, clears the entire line. |
| Ctrl + H | Backspace. |
| Ctrl + R | Let’s you search through previously used commands. Hit again to roll through the hits in the history. Searches through .bash_history in the user's home directory. |
| Arrowkeys Up/Down | Same as CTRL + P and CTRL + N. This will browse through the history. Hit enter to execute the command. |
| Ctrl + C | Kill whatever you are running. |
| Ctrl + D | Exit the current shell - logout. |
| Ctrl + Z | Puts whatever you are running into a suspended background process. You can then use the terminal for something else. Type 'fg' in the terminal to restore the process. |
| Ctrl + W | Delete the word before the cursor. |
| Ctrl + K | Clear the line after the cursor. |
| Ctrl + T | Swap the last two characters before the cursor. |
| Esc + T | Swap the last two words before the cursor. |
| Alt + F | Move cursor forward one word on the current line. |
| Alt + B | Move cursor backward one word on the current line. |
| Tab | Auto-complete files and folder names. |
| Shift + Page Up / Down | Scrolls through terminal buffer. |
The shortcuts that are a little trickier
| Ctrl + X * | In a directory you have two files: awesomeapp1.deb and notawesomebutneededapp4.deb. You want to install both. In debian the program you call is "dpkg -i filename.deb". If you don't want to write out all the names, you can type this: dpkg -i *.deb CTRL+x * (first ctrl+x and then press the * on your numpad or * on your normal, like shift+') and then it will resolve the names so that your command will be "dkpg -i awesomeapp1.deb notawesomebutneededapp4.deb" |
| Ctrl + X Ctrl + V | Prints something like this: GNU bash, version 4.1.2(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) |
| Macros | CTRL +X ( to start, CTRL +X ) to save. For example: first hit CTRL+x SHIFT+8 (this is on my keyboard layout) - then put in your commands. Everything you type after this is saved in a macro. Then CTRL+X SHIFT+9 to save. Then hit CTRL+x e to run the macro. |
Have fun!