Mac OS X Pocket Guide, Second Edition

Additional Shell Commands

One of the first things that traditional Unix users will notice when they start poking around in the Terminal is that there are a few new commands they’ll need to add to their repertoire. Three that we’ll discuss here are bindkey, defaults, and open.

bindkey

bindkey is a tcsh shell command, used to select, examine, and define key bindings for use in the Terminal. Table 4-13 shows the various uses of the bindkey command.

Table 4-13. Using the bindkey command

Command	Description
bindkey	List all the key bindings
bindkey -c key cmd	Bind key to Unix command cmd
bindkey -d	Restore the default key bindings
bindkey -e	Change the key bindings to Emacs mode
bindkey key	List the bindings for key
bindkey key cmd	Bind key to editing command cmd
bindkey -l	List the editing commands and their meanings
bindkey -r key	Remove binding for key
bindkey -s key str	Bind key to string str
bindkey -u	Display a message, showing how to use the bindkey command
bindkey -v	Change the key bindings to vi mode

For additional information on key bindings and how to alter them, see Using csh & tcsh (O’Reilly).

defaults

When you customize your Mac using the System Preferences, or an application’s preferences, all those changes and settings are stored in what’s known as the preferences system, and the command-line utility to change your preferences is the defaults command. Everything that you’ve done to make your Mac yours is stored as XML data in the form of ...