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I want to move left and right by words using ctrl + left/right arrow in terminal (I'm on ubuntu 12.10). Currently when I use these keystrokes I get ;5D or ;5C appended onto the line, which is useless for me.

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2 Answers

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Use Escb to go backward and Escf to go forward.

See https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Command-Line-Editing

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Thank you, those keystrokes work for me, but do you know any way to bind the ctrl + left/right arrow to do the same thing - perhaps by editing in .bashrc file something? – wim Dec 21 '12 at 1:46
Don't know exactly. Start researching the bind command – glenn jackman Dec 21 '12 at 11:42
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glenn jackman's answer above pointed me in the right direction, and I've figured it out - add the following lines into file ~/.inputrc:

# mappings for Ctrl-left-arrow and Ctrl-right-arrow for word moving
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\e\e[C": forward-word
"\e\e[D": backward-word
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