Command Line Time Savers

Original post date Mar 27th, 2012

Spending time on the command line is something that I do a lot of. So anything that can save me keystrokes is a welcome productivity tip. I came across these command line tips in my twitter feed from the guys over at Command Line Magic @climagic. These commands are to be used when you are simply typing on the command line and not specific to any editor.

[Ctrl-w] Remove the previous word.

[Esc-b] Move backward to the beginning of the previous word.

[Esc-f] Move forward to the end of the current word.

[Ctrl-a] Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.

[Ctrl-e] Move the cursor to the end of the line.

[Ctrl-u] Delete from the cursor to the beginning of the line.

[Ctrl-k] Delete from the cursor to the end of the line.

[Ctrl-l] Clears the screen. Easier than type clear and hitting enter.

When working with VCS’s on the command line these can come in handy and save tons of keystrokes.