Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Master Bash command line

You may already know the bash shortcut keys: CTL+A/CTL+E/CTL+R ... , but do you know how the shortcut keys are defined and any other useful shortcut keys?
The functions of short keys come from readline library, bash seems to be the only shell supports readline.
In addition to the shell capability, its editing mode has to be set to emacs instead of vi

$set -o | egrep '^vi | ^emacs'
emacs           on
vi              off

To check current key bindings:
$bind -p | grep  \[CM]
…
"\M-.": yank-last-arg
"\M-_": yank-last-arg
"\M-\C-y": yank-nth-arg
"\M-y": yank-pop
The text C-k is read as `Control-y', Control is Ctrl key.
The text M-k is read as `Meta-k', Meta key is ESC/ALT key
The following is not a complete list of short keys,check
readline readme for a complete list)

Example command:

$ echo one two three
one two three
TASK #1 paste the last argument: the word “three”
m-. insert last argument of the previous command( special variable $_ also refer to last argument, it works for ksh/bash)


TASK #2 paste the 1st argument or the command.
m-c-y : to paste 1st argument “one”


TASK #3 paste the command or the nth argument
m-2-m-c-y : to paste the 2nd argument “two”;

m-0-m-c-y : to paste the command “echo” itself.

TASK #4 delete word “three” to change it to “echo one two”
Step #1) Retrieve last command:
Use either of thee options: Up arrow key ; c-p key ; c-r key to search, keep pressing c-r to find the next match
Step #2) Delete the word.
c-w Delete from the cursor to the previous whitespace(you don’t need to type backspace five times to delete the word)
m-d is the opposite of c-w is , so to delete “echo”; the key sequence will be c-p c-a m-d

Less used text keys to cut text: c-k and c-u
C-k Kill the text from the current cursor position to the end of the line
C-u Kill backward from the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
To delete text “echo one”: c-p m-b m-b c-u (m-b is to back one word)


TASK #5 swap “three” “two” change it to “echo one three two”
c-p m-b c-w c-e c-y the key-point is to cut (c-w) word “two” and paste(c-y) it to end of line


TASK #6 undo the changes
m-r Undo all changes made to this line
c-_ Incremental undo, separately remembered for each line


###Other shell tips
CDPATH: directory search path Instead of typing full path, firstly adding the parent dir to CDPATH ENV variable(save it to .profile for permanent change), then cd dir-name will go to the dir
$ export CDPATH=/var/log/
$cd audit
/var/log/audit
OLDPWD: - is equivalent to $OLDPWD; When it is used as the operand, this shall be equivalent to the command:
cd "$OLDPWD" && pwd ; (reference man ksh or man bash)


$cd /tmp
$cd /var/tmp
$cd -
/tmp
DIRS
“-“ only remember last dir, for dirs >2 , you can use “pushd .” to remember any number of dirs;
the dir names can be displayed with “dirs” command or go to the last dir with “popd” command

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