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Ubuntu: Up and Running
book

Ubuntu: Up and Running

by Robin Nixon
April 2010
Beginner content levelBeginner
464 pages
12h 7m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Ubuntu: Up and Running

The Command-Line Editor

Before looking at the command-line instructions, I’d like to explore the various ways you can enter and edit text on the command line, because numerous options are available to make your life a lot easier.

For example, once you have entered one or more commands, you can scroll back and forth through the command history to reselect or edit previous commands by using the Up and Down cursor keys, or Ctrl-N for Next and Ctrl-P for Previous, as you can see from Table 7-1.

Table 7-1. Bash keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut

Equivalent to

Action

Ctrl-A

Home

Move the cursor to the start of the line.

Ctrl-E

End

Move the cursor to the end of the line.

Ctrl-D

Delete

Delete the character under the cursor. On a blank line, Ctrl-D (but not Delete) will cause the Terminal window to close.

Ctrl-H

Backspace

Delete the character to the left of the cursor.

Ctrl-J

Enter

Enter the current line.

Ctrl-B

Left arrow

Move the cursor back a character.

Ctrl-F

Right arrow

Move the cursor forward a character.

Ctrl-P

Up arrow

Recall the previous command (if any). See also Ctrl-N.

Ctrl-N

Down arrow

Recall the next command (if any). Using this and Ctrl-P, you can scroll back and forth through all the commands entered in a session.

Alt-B

Ctrl-left arrow

Move the cursor to the previous start of a word.

Shift-Alt-F

Ctrl-right arrow

Move the cursor to the first character following the end of the current word.

Shift-Ctrl-C

 

Copy the highlighted contents to the Ubuntu (not the Bash) clipboard.

Shift-Ctrl-V

 

Paste the contents of the Ubuntu (not ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449382827Errata Page