What are the following keyboard shortcuts in a terminal?

Question

I am trying to figure out a few keyboard shortcuts in a terminal in Mac OS X (and Linux):

In the command line:

1. go to the next word
2. go to the previous word
3. go to the end of the line
4. go to the beginning of the line

This will make it easier to change commands. Right now, I am using the left/right arrow keys, which is time consuming.

EDIT: I used bind -p as suggested below. What do the following key bindings mean?

"\e\e[D": backward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\eb": backward-word

and:

"\e\e[C": forward-word
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\ef": forward-word

Answer 1

You're looking for the readline movement commands. They are shared with emacs. Here are the defaults:

• Ctrl+A: start of line
• Ctrl+E: end of line
• Alt+F: forward a word
• Alt+B: backward a word

You might also have Alt+← and Alt+→ keys bound for back and forward a word. My OSX 10.6 doesn't, but my Ubuntu 12.04 does.

Note that in OSX you can't use alt by default since that puts in an accented letter. Rather, use escape. You have to hit it each time though, you can't hold it down.

The other answer referring to vi-mode may also be useful to you if you are familiar with vi. See here for some more info.

Answer 2

If you're using VI mode command-line editing, then you would use (in order) w b $ 0