Chapter2. Command-Line

This is exactly what bash allows you to do. It has editing modes that allow you to edit command lines with editing commands similar to those of the two most popular UNIX editors, vi and emacs. It also provides a much-extended analog to the C shell history mechanism called fc (for fix command) that, among other things, allows you to use your favorite editor directly for editing your command lines. To round things out, bash also provides the original C shell history mechanism.

bash initially starts interactively with emacs-mode as the default, First, you can use the set command:

$ set -o emacs

or:

$ set -o vi

The second way of selecting the editing mode is to set a readline variable in the file .inputrc.

vi Editing Mode

Editing commands in vi input mode

Command	Description
DEL	Delete previous character
CTRL-W	Erase previous word (i.e., erase until a blank)
CTRL-V	Quote the next character
ESC	Enter control mode (see below)

Basic vi control mode commands

Command	Description
h	Move left one character
l	Move right one character
w	Move right one word
b	Move left one word
W	Move to beginning of next non-blank word
B	Move to beginning of preceding non-blank word
e	Move to end of current word
E	Move to end of current non-blank word
0	Move to beginning of line
^	Move to first non-blank character in line
$	Move to end of line

Commands for entering vi input mode

Command	Description
i	Text inserted before current character (insert)
a	Text inserted after current character (append)
I	Text inserted at beginning of line
A	Text inserted at end of line
R	Text overwrites existing text

Abbreviations for vi-mode delete commands

Command	Description
D	Equivalent to d$ (delete to end of line)
dd	Equivalent to 0d$ (delete entire line)
C	Equivalent to c$ (delete to end of line, enter input mode)
cc	Equivalent to 0c$ (delete entire line, enter input mode)
X	Equivalent to dl (delete character backwards)
x	Equivalent to dh (delete character forwards)

vi control mode commands for searching the command history

Command	Description
k or -	Move backward one line
j or +	Move forward one line
G	Move to line given by repeat count
/string	Search backward for string
?string	Search forward for string
n	Repeat search in same direction as previous
N	Repeat search in opposite direction of previous

** Miscellaneous vi-mode commands**

Command	Description
~	Invert (twiddle) case of current character(s)
-	Append last word of previous command, enter input mode
CTRL-L	Clear the screen and redraw the current line on it; good for when your screen becomes garbled
#	Prepend # (comment character) to the line and send it to the history list; useful for saving a command to be executed later without having to retype it

The readline Startup File

The default startup file is called .inputrc and must exist in your home directory if you wish to customize readline. You can change the default filename by setting the environment variable INPUTRC