The list of Linux Terminal Command Like Keyboard Shortcuts (Hotkeys)
For many Linux newbies it is not obvious that there are plenty of useful keyboard shortcuts available in the terminal's command line. In this article, I would like to cover them. Knowing these shortcuts saves a lot of time, especially when you work with long commands.
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Linux, regardless of the distro you use, comes with one or a few GUI Terminal emulator apps. Most popular of them are Gnome Terminal, Xterm, MATE Terminal, xfce4-terminal, Konsole of KDE, along with various exotic stuff like yaquake. Also, you can go into the "pure" console by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1 ... Ctrl + Alt + F12.
The terminal runs a shell, the handy command line environment. Depending on the shell you use (sh, bash, zsh, etc), it may add extra usability improvements and tools.
Almost all terminal emulator apps and shells support the common list of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys). If you use it often, it is a good idea to learn them.
Linux Terminal Command Line Keyboard Shortcuts
- Go through the history of typed commands: ↑/↓ or Ctrl+P/Ctrl+N
- Reverse search of the command history: Ctrl+R
- Move one word to the left (backward): Alt+B
- Move one word to the right (forward): Alt+F
- Move to the beginning of the command line: Ctrl+A or Home
- Move to the end of the command line: Ctrl+E or End
- Scroll window up: Shift+Page Up
- Scroll window down: Shift+Page Down
- Abort the current command or clear the entered text: Ctrl+C
Send 'end-of-file' (EOF): Ctrl+D - Pause execution of the current job (make it zombie, resume it with the fg command): Ctrl+Z
- Erase a word to the left: Ctrl+W or Esc+← Backspace
- Erase a word to the right: Alt+D
- Erase a line to the left: Ctrl+U
- Erase a line to the right: Ctrl+K
- Paste the previously erased text: Ctrl+Y
- Paste the contents of the clipboard at the cursor position: Shift+Ins or Ctrl + Shift + V
- Insert the next character typed verbatim: Ctrl+V
- Auto-complete a command or file name: Tab
- Clear screen/Redraw the current app UI if supported: Ctrl+L
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