I am currently using bash on OSX (via iTerm2). Sometimes I have to run programs with a very lengthy set of command line arguments. If I find that I've mistyped, it takes way too long to arrow back to the mistake and fix it. I know some programs, such as nano, support mouse reporting for cursor positioning. Is this supported by any shells, or (even better) as an option to bash?
4 Answers
Sounds like you would benefit from investing a short amount of time in learning
some default readline keyboard shortcuts. Note that user606723's
answer
above gives some basic ones but the Home and
Alt+arrow keys do not work on all terminals. Here are a
few of the ones I find the following most useful and which also work in more
terminals.
(Unless otherwise noted, "word" means an alphanumeric string.)
- Alt-f: go one word forward.
- Alt-b: go one word back.
- Ctrl-a: go to beginning of line
- Ctrl-e: go to end of line
- Alt-d: delete to end of word
- Alt-Backspace: delete to beginning of word
- Ctrl-w: delete backwards to whitespace
- Ctrl-y: paste most recently deleted text
- Ctrl-b, Ctrl-f: move backward/forward one character, equivalent to left and right
- Ctrl-h, Ctrl-d: equivalent to Backspace and Delete, respectively.
I list the last few because I find them more convenient than reaching for the arrow keys or delete/backspace. You can see how with these basic shortcuts you can do quite a bit of editing rather easily. But there are more:
- Alt-.: rotate through the last word (white-space delimited) of the previous lines in history. Using it one gets you the last argument of the most recent command you typed.
- Ctrl-_: undo (incremental)
- Ctrl-]: search forward for character (like
fin vim, but less convenient) - Ctrl-r: reverse history search
- Alt-0...Alt-9: numeric argument to next command. For
example if you wanted to delete 4 words: Alt-4Alt-d. Or
if you need 1024
A's on the command line for some reason: Alt-1024A. - Ctrl-u: delete from cursor position to beginning of line
- Ctrl-k: delete from cursor position to end of line
And these are just a few of the ones I use - there are many more in the manpage.
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I selected this answer because it's the one I think I will use, but these are all great solutions. Thanks! Aug 14, 2011 at 12:34
I don't know but ...
History Expansion
to repeat the last command after correcting teh to the
^teh^the^
to repeat the last command that contained the word foo after changing the first occurrence of bar to qax
!?foo?:s/bar/qax/
Line editing
you can use emacs-style editing commands to move quickly through the line.
I prefer vi mode set -o vi which means I can use b and w to move back and forwards a word at a time and use fx to move the cursor to the next occurrence of a specific character x.
answered Aug 12, 2011 at 14:51
GPM (General Purpose Mouse) is a mouse server for the console and xterm
EDIT: Apparently there's also a version 2.
This isn't an 'answer', but it is a solution. I am submitting it as an answer because I require the extra room.
Have you tried using a combination of Home and Alt + Left
- Home - Will take to the front of the command.
- End - Will take to the end of the command.
- Alt + Left - Will take you a "word" to the left.
- Alt + Right - Will take you a "word" to the right.
With these key combos, it should be alot easier to traverse back to your mistake =)
answered Aug 12, 2011 at 15:14
alt/optionwhile clicking the mouse will move your cursor to that location in the line. I haven't figured out how to enable select-and-cut or typing to replace selection, but this may help for your case.