Linux: Most Important Keybinding for {Bash, Man, Terminal} ⌨

Xah Lee, 2012-09-15, 2012-10-06

This pages show the most important keys for bash, man page, terminal app.

Bash Keys

These are the major keys of bash shell.

Moving cursor:

Deleting:

Paste:

Search Command History:

【Ctrl+r】 = interactive search backward command history. (can press it multiple times)
【Ctrl+s】 = search forward command history
【↑】 = previous command
【↓】 = next command (after you pressed ↑)

Special, Job Control:

You can see most of special process control keys by stty -a.

Note: arrows keys, page up/down keys, home/end keys, usually work too, but not always.

By default, bash keys are the same as emacs's basic keys. 〔☛ Xah Emacs Tutorial〕

Bash keys can be customized in 〔~/.inputrc〕. See man readline. For a sample file of customized 〔.inputrc〕, see: System-wide ErgoEmacs Keybinding for Windows, Mac, Bash.

Here's the most important keys when viewing man page. Also works in paging programs such as “less”, “more”.

These keys are similar to vi's keys. (not exactly compatible. For example, page down in vi is 【Ctrl+f】, not 【f】.) 〔☛ vi tutorial〕

Here's most important keys in Gnome terminal. (You can see the full list under menu 〖Edit ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts…〗)

【⇧ Shift+⇞ Page △】 = page up the terminal screen. Mouse scroll wheel works too.
【⇧ Shift+⇟ Page ▽】 = page down the terminal screen.
【⇧ Shift+↖ Home】 = move to top of the terminal screen.
【⇧ Shift+↘ End】 = move to bottom of the terminal screen.

【Ctrl+Alt+F1】 Switch entire screen to a text console mode, screen 1. F1 can be up to F6.
【Ctrl+Alt+F7】 Switch entire screen back to GUI mode.

System-wide, 【Alt+F2】 pops a run dialoge. In Xfce desktop, the command name is xfrun4.