emacs Mode Commands

The material in this section also appears in Learning the bash Shell by Cameron Newham (O’Reilly).

emacs Mode Commands is a complete list of readline Emacs editing mode commands.

Table A-23. emacs mode commands

Command

Meaning

Ctrl-A

Move to beginning of line.

Ctrl-B

Move backward one character.

Ctrl-D

Delete one character forward.

Ctrl-E

Move to end of line.

Ctrl-F

Move forward one character.

Ctrl-G

Abort the current editing command and ring the terminal bell.

Ctrl-J

Same as Return.

Ctrl-K

Delete (kill) forward to end of line.

Ctrl-L

Clear screen and redisplay the line.

Ctrl-M

Same as Return.

Ctrl-N

Next line in command history.

Ctrl-O

Same as Return, then display next line in history file.

Ctrl-P

Previous line in command history.

Ctrl-R

Search backward.

Ctrl-S

Search forward.

Ctrl-T

Transpose two characters.

Ctrl-U

Kill backward from point to the beginning of line.

Ctrl-V

Make the next character typed verbatim.

Ctrl-V Tab

Insert a Tab.

Ctrl-W

Kill the word behind the cursor, using whitespace as the boundary.

Ctrl-X/

List the possible filename completions of the current word.

Ctrl-X~

List the possible username completions of the current word.

Ctrl-X $

List the possible shell variable completions of the current word.

Ctrl-X@

List the possible hostname completions of the current word.

Ctrl-X!

List the possible command name completions of the current word.

Ctrl-X(

Begin saving characters into the current keyboard macro.

Ctrl-X)

Stop saving characters into the current keyboard macro.

Ctrl-Xe

Re-execute the last keyboard ...

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