BASH Keyboard Shortcuts

BASH (Bourne-again shell) is the default Unix shell for Ubuntu and most Linux distributions. Its name is a pun on the name of an earlier shell called the Bourne shell, written by Stephen Bourne. On Useful BASH Commands, I have compiled a list of useful BASH commands. This post is devoted to BASH keyboard shortcuts. You can use BASH from any of the virtual consoles in Ubuntu, which you can get to by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1 (or any of the Function keys between F1 and F6). You can get back to the GUI by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F7. However, I prefer to simply use the GNOME Terminal. Just go to Applications → Accessories → Terminal or you can use the Run Application dialog with Alt + F2 and type gnome-terminal. Here’s the GNOME Terminal in action:

BASH Keyboard Shortcuts

Alt+b

Move cursor backward one word on the current line

Ctrl+a

Move cursor to the beginning of the current line

Ctrl+e

Move cursor to the end of the current line

Ctrl+c

Kill whatever process the shell is running

Ctrl+h

Same as backspace

Ctrl+k

Clear the line after the cursor

Ctrl+u

Clear the line before the cursor

Ctrl+l

Clear the screen, similar to the clear command

Ctrl+r

Search through previous commands

Ctrl+t

Swap the last two characters before the cursor

Ctrl+w

Delete the word before the cursor

Ctrl+z

Suspend current process, can restore later with fg

Esc+d

Delete the word to the right of the cursor

Esc+t

Swap the last two words before the cursor

Shift+PageUp/Down

Scroll up and down in the BASH window

Tab

Auto-complete file and folder names in current directory

For more information and a few more shortcuts, check out this Bash Wikipedia Entry.