Ctl-U to delete everything on the line before cursor.
Ctl-E to skip to end of line.
Ctl-A to skip to beginning of line.
Kids these days….
These Ctrl keys are shortcuts from Emacs - there’s a Bash settings to switch to vi-mode if you so wish. Anyway, the first Emacs was written in 1981, probably on a PDP-11, which did not have Home and End! Same reason Neovim uses “yank” instead of “copy”. ctrl-c/ctrl-v did not exist as a shortcut back when vi was being written!
I know you didn’t intend to be mean or anything, but maaaaaan kids these days don’t know their history (not entirely your fault, btw)😆
This tip is super useful to me because not everyone is using a PC. On a PC sure, I would use the Home and End keys all the time. Now I’m using a laptop as my main computer and the Home and End keys are in a weird position that even to this day, 4ish years of laptop use, I still have to actually look at the keys to find them.
That’s horrible for muscle memory, every time I switch desk/keyboard I have to re-learn the position of the home/end/delete/PgUp/PgDn keys.
I got used to Ctrl-a / Ctrl-e and it became second nature, my hands don’t have to fish for extra keys, to the point that it becomes annoying when a program does not support that. Some map Ctrl-a to “Select all” so, for input fields where the selection is one line, I’d rather Ctrl-a then left/right to go to the beginning/end than fish for home/end, wherever they are.
If you’re a VIM motions fan, you can always install the zsh-vi-mode: https://github.com/jeffreytse/zsh-vi-mode.
ctrl-b: move cursor back one character
ctrl-f: move cursor foward one character
ctrl-d: delete character under cursor
Alt-deletedeletes the whole word before cursorAlt-ddeletes the whole word after cursorCtrl-kdeletes (kill) everything after the cursor
Whatever is deleted is stored in the “killring” and can be pasted(yanked) back with Ctrl-y (like someone else already mentioned), consecutive uses of Alt-delete/Alt-d add to the killring.
Alt-b/Alt-fmoves one word backwards / forwardsAlt-tswaps (translocates) the current word with the previous oneCtrl-_undo last edit operation
All those bindings are the same as in emacs.
Also, normally Ctrl-d inserts the end-of-file character, and typically can be used to close an active shell session or when you have some other interpreter open in the terminal for interactive input.
My favorite tips are:
You can filter the output of a command. Most commands return parameters like (output, error) so you can filter them by number like 1>/dev/null will filter the output and only show the errors, and 2>/dev/null will filter the errors and only show the output. Also if you want a command to run silently but it doesn’t have it’s own built-in quiet mode you can add &>/dev/null which will filter everything.
Bash (and other shell’s I assume) can be fully customized. In addition to the .bashrc file in your home directory, there are also a few common files that bash will look for like .bash_aliases, .bash_commands, .bash_profile or you can create your own and just add to the end of the .bashrc file ./YOUR_CUSTOM_BASH_FILE_NAME
Inside that file you can add any custom commands you want to run for every bash shell like aliases and what not.
I personally often use a simple update command like so alias up='sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y' which just makes running updates, upgrades, and clean-up so much easier. Just type up and enter your password. I have previously added in things like &>/dev/null to quiet the commands and echo Fetching updates... to make some commands quieter but still give some simple feedback.
There’s also the basics of moving around a terminal command as others have pointed out. The easiest and the one I use the most is if you hold CTRL+LEFT_ARROW the cursor will move entire words instead of one character at a time. Very helpful if you need to change something in the middle of a command.
What can tmux do that you can’t do using startup and exiting scripts?
Retain sessions when you’re over SSH and get disconnected.
I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned, since it’s my only use case for tmux.
You can use - everywhere you can use a ref in a git command. I very often use
git checkout master
git pull
git checkout -
git merge -
(Of course that’s all aliased and I have other flags in there too, but that’s the gist)
Same for cd -. Nice if you want to go to /etc/blah, and then back to where you were.
You can also use pushd and popd which will push and pop directories from a stack, if you need to do something more complex.
Also, if you want to switch faster between branches, slap this in your ~/.gitconfig under [alias]:
co = !git checkout $(git for-each-ref refs/heads/ --format='%(refname:short)' | fzf)
Presuming you’ve got fzf installed, you can now git co (co = checkout) to get a menu with fuzzy find capabilities to switch between branches. Nice if branch names are long/similar/only-different-at-the-end.
fzf is dope.
I have fzf-git for all of that, but honestly I don’t ever use it, as I’m hardly ever switching between branches and tab complete is enough for me in most cases.
###
# FZF GIT
###
# Deciphered from fzf-file-widget. Somewhat unclear why it doesn't exist already!
function fzf_add_to_commandline -d 'add stdin to the command line, for fzf functions'
#git checkout $1
read -l result
commandline -t ""
commandline -it -- (string escape $result)
commandline -f repaint
end
function fzf_checkout -d "git checkout"
read -l result
git checkout $result
end
# https://gist.github.com/aluxian/9c6f97557b7971c32fdff2f2b1da8209
function __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo
command -s -q git
and git rev-parse HEAD >/dev/null 2>&1
end
function __git_fzf_git_status
__git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
git -c color.status=always status --short | \
fzf -m --ansi --preview 'git diff --color=always HEAD -- {-1} | head -500' | \
cut -c4- | \
sed 's/.* -> //' | \
fzf_add_to_commandline
commandline -f repaint
end
function __git_fzf_git_branch
__git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
git branch -a --color=always | \
grep -v '/HEAD\s' | \
fzf -m --ansi --preview-window right:70% --preview 'git log --color=always --oneline --graph --date=short \
--pretty="format:%C(auto)%cd %h%d %s %C(magenta)[%an]%Creset" \
--print0 \
--read0 \
(echo {} | sed s/^..// | cut -d" " -f1) | head -'$LINES | \
sed 's/^..//' | cut -d' ' -f1 | \
sed 's#^remotes/##' | \
# fzf_add_to_commandline | \
fzf_checkout
end
function __git_fzf_git_tag
__git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
git tag --sort -version:refname | \
fzf -m --ansi --preview-window right:70% --preview 'git show --color=always {} | head -'$LINES | \
fzf_add_to_commandline
end
function __git_fzf_git_log
__git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
git log --color=always --graph --date=short --format="%C(auto)%cd %h%d %s %C(magenta)[%an]%Creset" | \
fzf -m --ansi --reverse --preview 'git show --color=always (echo {} | grep -o "[a-f0-9]\{7,\}") | head -'$LINES | \
sed -E 's/.*([a-f0-9]{7,}).*/\1/' | \
fzf_add_to_commandline
end
# https://gist.github.com/junegunn/8b572b8d4b5eddd8b85e5f4d40f17236
function git_fzf_key_bindings -d "Set custom key bindings for git+fzf"
bind \ca\cs __git_fzf_git_status
bind \ca\cf __git_fzf_git_branch
bind \ca\ct __git_fzf_git_tag
bind \ca\cl __git_fzf_git_log
end
git_fzf_key_bindings
advanced terminal
or
advanced tips and tricks
?
