Bash CLI tricks

Keyboard shortcuts

You can find complete lists of Bash shortcuts elsewhere. I only write down those I’m trying to learn…

Shortcut	Task
`Ctrl-O`	Execute current line from history, on return gives next line
`Ctrl-U`	Delete from cursor to beginning of line
`Meta-*`	Insert all possible command line completions

**Bang!

Command
`!!`	Previous command
`!$`	Last argument of previous command
`!*`	All arguments of previous command

.inputrc

The file ~/.inputrc, if it exists, controls the behaviour of GNU readline and affects many interactive programs, e.g. Bash, Python shell, etc. An example configuration:

# /etc/inputrc
"\C-p":history-search-backward
"\C-n":history-search-forward

set colored-stats On
set completion-ignore-case On
set completion-prefix-display-length 3
set mark-symlinked-directories On
set show-all-if-ambiguous On
set show-all-if-unmodified On
set visible-stats On

Resources

Levy, J. (2019) The Art of Command Line. Retrieved 2020-04-14 from https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line
Rouberol, B. (2020-04-24) Shell productivity tips and tricks. Retrieved 2020-06-26 from https://blog.balthazar-rouberol.com/shell-productivity-tips-and-tricks