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Bash Shortcuts

Controlling the Screen​

  • Ctrl+L: Clear the screen. This is similar to running the "clear" command.
  • Ctrl+S: Stop all output to the screen. This is particularly useful when running commands with a lot of long, verbose output, but you don't want to stop the command itself with Ctrl+C.
  • Ctrl+Q: Resume output to the screen after stopping it with Ctrl+S.

Moving the Cursor​

  • Ctrl+A or Home: Go to the beginning of the line.
  • Ctrl+E or End: Go to the end of the line.
  • Alt+B: Go left (back) one word.
  • Alt+F: Go right (forward) one word.
  • Ctrl+XX: Move between the beginning of the line and the current position of the cursor. This allows you to press Ctrl+XX to return to the start of the line, change something, and then press Ctrl+XX to go back to your original cursor position. To use this shortcut, hold the Ctrl key and tap the X key twice.
  • Ctrl + b - Move back one full screen
  • Ctrl + f - Move forward one full screen
  • Ctrl + d - Move forward 1/2 screen
  • Ctrl + u - Move back (up) 1/2 screen

Working With Processes​

  • Ctrl+C:Interrupt (kill) the current foreground process running in in the terminal. This sends the SIGINT signal to the process, which is technically just a request - most processes will honor it, but some may ignore it.
  • Ctrl+Z: Suspend the current foreground process running in bash. This sends the SIGTSTP signal to the process. To return the process to the foreground later, use the fg process_name command.
  • Ctrl+D: Close the bash shell. This sends an EOF (End-of-file) marker to bash, and bash exits when it receives this marker. This is similar to running the exit command.

Deleting Text​

  • Ctrl+DorDelete: Delete the character under the cursor.
  • Alt+D: Delete all characters after the cursor on the current line.
  • Ctrl+HorBackspace: Delete the character before the cursor.

Fixing Typos​

  • Alt+T: Swap the current word with the previous word.
  • Ctrl+T: Swap the last two characters before the cursor with each other. You can use this to quickly fix typos when you type two characters in the wrong order.
  • Ctrl+_: Undo your last key press. You can repeat this to undo multiple times.

Cutting and Pasting​

  • Ctrl+W: Cut the word before the cursor, adding it to the clipboard.
  • Ctrl+K: Cut the part of the line after the cursor, adding it to the clipboard.
  • Ctrl+U: Cut the part of the line before the cursor, adding it to the clipboard.
  • Ctrl+Y: Paste the last thing you cut from the clipboard. The y here stands for "yank".

Capitalizing Characters​

  • Alt+U: Capitalize every character from the cursor to the end of the current word, converting the characters to upper case.
  • Alt+L: Uncapitalize every character from the cursor to the end of the current word, converting the characters to lower case.
  • Alt+C: Capitalize the character under the cursor. Your cursor will move to the end of the current word.

Bash also has a special "recall" mode you can use to search for commands you've previously run:

  • Ctrl+R: Recall the last command matching the characters you provide. Press this shortcut and start typing to search your bash history for a command.
  • Ctrl+O: Run a command you found with Ctrl+R.
  • Ctrl+G: Leave history searching mode without running a command.

References​

https://github.com/LeCoupa/awesome-cheatsheets/blob/master/languages/bash.sh