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In Bash Emacs mode, is there any way to delete till the previous slash character?
For example, if I entered the command cp /usr/local/bin/reallylongincorrectfolder /home/myname/reallylong_and_correct_path and want to just delete the reallylongincorrectfolder, is there any shortcut?
This is a very common scenario for me in Bash.
Something like dF<char> in vi?
bind -P |grep unix-filename-rubout
To test out the keybinding with eg. Ctrl-b:
bind \\C-b:unix-filename-rubout
For permanent usage, add it to ~/.inputrc
~/.inputrc, add a line like this to that file: "\C-b": unix-filename-rubout. To see the effect, you'll have to start a new bash shell (or run some other program that uses the GNU readline library).
Jul 29, 2018 at 10:50
Alt-Backspace and Ctrl-w are commonly mapped to backward-kill-word, which does that. If you want to find out what it's mapped to on your system (if anything), run bind -P | grep '^backward-kill-word'.
As explained by @Barmar, this is different from unix-word-rubout, which removes to the previous space boundary.
unix-word-rubout: Kill the word behind point, using white space as a word boundary.
unix-filename-rubout is slightly better, since it'll stop at white space and slash.
alt + backspace deletes until /, thus answering the question. ctrl + w on the other hand deletes until the previous space.
Feb 20, 2017 at 9:49
Put this in your .inputrc and start a new shell:
C-b:unix-filename-rubout
Ctrl-b now erases backwards to the next slash.
Nirvana!
Don't forget Ctrl-XCtrl-E will launch your editor so you can edit a complicated command line comfortably.
