bash Cookbook

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 ...