Unix command-line shortcuts
A cursor on an empty line is not a prompt, it is a question. The shell does not draw icons and does not hide syntax behind buttons: it waits for you to phrase a thought in words the machine understands. Learning to speak this language is not a "productivity boost", it is a way to stop mediating between yourself and the processor through a mouse.
I am not going to write a "beginner's cheat sheet". You will claw your own way to it, because your hands will get tired of dragging the mouse and the line will grow longer than your patience. There are no badges, no certificates, and no laminated "best practices" from conferences that smell of catering. There is only the language you speak to the machine with — until you learn to speak back. Looking under the hood is the whole secret of "advanced tricks". No magic: just keys invented by people who believed that Ctrl+A is the start of the line, not "select all".
Movement
At first it is awkward. Like hand-soldering a thin joint for the first time, without a jig or a clamp: your fingers tremble, the solder lands crooked. Then they start living on their own. The cursor turns into a little register you move without thinking, and the line becomes a stack where the beginning and the end exist at once, like two sides of an old coin.
| Commands | Description |
|---|---|
ctrl + a |
Go to the beginning of the line |
ctrl + e |
Go to the end of the line |
ctrl + b |
back 1 character |
ctrl + f |
forward 1 character |
alt + f |
forward 1 word |
alt + b |
back 1 word |
ctrl + xx |
Toggle between the beginning of the line and the current cursor position |
ctrl + ] + x |
If x is any character, move the cursor forward to the next occurrence of x |
alt + ctrl + ] + x |
If x is any character, move the cursor back to the previous occurrence of x. |
Editing
And now the line stops being just text. The line is a buffer, the cursor is a pointer, and Ctrl+U and Ctrl+K are like free and kill, only the text is alive. You cut the word before the cursor, paste its tail where the beginning used to be, and no shell framework is needed here: readline has existed longer than most fashionable terminal wrappers and still does its job silently. Ctrl+Z is not "suspend a job" from a textbook, it is an honest signal: the machine is waiting, you went off for data, it will not be offended.
| Commands | Description |
|---|---|
| ctrl + d | Delete the character under the cursor |
| ctrl + h | Delete the previous character before the cursor |
| ctrl + u | Clear all / cut BEFORE the cursor |
| ctrl + k | Clear all / cut AFTER the cursor |
| ctrl + w | Delete the word BEFORE the cursor |
| alt + d | Delete the word under the cursor |
| ctrl + y | Paste (if you used the previous command to delete) |
| ctrl + i | Autocomplete the command (tab) |
| ctrl + l | Clear |
| ctrl + c | Kill the running process |
| ctrl + z | Suspends the current foreground job. Useful if you want, say, to close the editor and go somewhere for the data you need. You can resume the suspended application with the fg command (bring it to the foreground) or bg (run it in the background). |
| ctrl + _ | Undo the line change |
| ctrl + t | Swap the last two characters before the cursor |
| esc + t | Swap last two words before the cursor |
| alt + t | swap current word with previous |
| esc + . | Insert the last argument of the previous command |
| esc + _ | The same — insert the last argument |
| alt + [Backspace] | delete PREVIOUS word |
| alt + < | Move to the first line in the history |
| alt + > | Move to the end of the input history, i.e., the line currently being entered |
| alt + ? | display the file/folder names in the current path as help |
| alt + * | print all the file/folder names in the current path as parameter |
| alt + . | print the LAST ARGUMENT (ie "vim file1.txt file2.txt" will yield "file2.txt") |
| alt + c | capitalize the first character to end of word starting at cursor (whole word if cursor is at the beginning of word) |
| alt + u | make uppercase from cursor to end of word |
| alt + l | make lowercase from cursor to end of word |
| alt + n | Search forward through command history |
| alt + p | Non-incremental reverse search of history. |
| alt + r | Undo all changes to the line |
| alt + ctl + e | Expand command line. |
| ~[TAB][TAB] | List all users |
| $[TAB][TAB] | List all system variables |
| @[TAB][TAB] | List all entries in your /etc/hosts file |
| [TAB] | Auto complete |
History
Command history is not a "log" and not an "event journal". It is the machine's memory dug out in reverse, like a disassembler that reads bytes right to left. Ctrl+R — dive deeper, Ctrl+S — surface; !! — replay the past without retyping it, and ^abc^xyz — a little surgery right in the last line. Memory on a machine never asks "are you sure?". It just keeps everything, including the commands you would rather not remember in front of witnesses.
| Commands | Description |
|---|---|
| ctrl + r | Search backward starting at the current line and moving 'up' through the history as necessary |
| ctrl + s | Search forward starting at the current line and moving 'down' through the history as necessary |
| ctrl + p | Fetch the previous command from the history list, moving back in the list (same as up arrow) |
| ctrl + n | Fetch the next command from the history list, moving forward in the list (same as down arrow) |
| ctrl + o | Execute the command found via Ctrl+r or Ctrl+s |
| ctrl + g | Escape from history searching mode |
| !! | Run PREVIOUS command (ie sudo !!) |
| !vi | Run PREVIOUS command that BEGINS with vi |
| !vi:p | Print previously run command that BEGINS with vi |
| !n | Execute nth command in history |
| !$ | Last argument of last command |
| !^ | First argument of last command |
| ^abc^xyz | Replace first occurrence of abc with xyz in last command and execute it |
Extra
One day you will realize that this whole set is about the same thing: not spending your life moving the cursor while the tea goes cold somewhere in the kitchen. And along the way you will learn that a Makefile can also give hints, if you know where to poke:
The paradox is that the "standard" shell everyone considers a vestige turns out to be more convenient than any fresh terminal superhero. Fashion changes, frameworks die, but Ctrl+A still leads to the beginning of the line. The screen does not go dark — and the cursor keeps blinking, and you type again.