Bash uses readline, and readline can delete the word to the right of the cursor with "kill-word".
The problem is in recognizing the keypress of control-delete. When I press them in bash, "5~" is output on the screen. I could just bind for this, but it would mean that one day I need to type "5~", and it deletes a word to the right instead! So I'd much rather discover the correct control sequence.
I have googled, and quite a few resources discuss the "delete" key, but none that I've found discuss "control-delete" key. I've experimented with many variations, but nothing works.
The worst is the hours I've spent on this tedious, mindless grind, when it really should be a non-problem.
EDIT: It's through X, so maybe there's a solution with xev and xmodmap
On my machine, pressing Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Delete outputs this:
^[[3;5~
The ^[ escape character can be replaced with \e, so you can then use bind like this for bash (in your ~/.bashrc for example):
bind '"\e[3;5~":kill-word'
Or, you can add the following to your ~/.inputrc so Ctrl-Delete does kill-word in any program that uses readline:
"\e[3;5~": kill-word
This will bind only the Ctrl-Delete key, you don't have to worry about what will happen if you need to type 5~.
What you see is not the whole truth. It's probably <ESC>5~ or something like that. Try Ctrl-V Ctrl-Delete. The Ctrl-V means "do not interpret the next thing".
So binding <ESC>5~ that should be pretty safe.
Alt+D deletes one word to the right of the cursor
Ctrl+W deletes one word to the left of the cursor
(both are based on Emacs, I believe)
If you type ^Q^V (that's Control-Q followed by Control-V, releasing the Control key between them is fine), and then press Control-Delete, do you get the output you mentioned? I just tried it, and at least using Putty I don't get a response at all. Perhaps the behvior is different on an actual Linux console, though.
For other keys, readline prints a longer sequence, often including a special "command sequence introduction" character, which is hard to type by mistake. Try it, and see if you get a longer sequence with the ^Q^V command (which is, btw, called quoted-insert).
For example, if I press ^Q^V and then Delete (without control held down), readline prints ^[[3~. This tells me I can bind stuff to the Delete key by saying \e[[3~. It seems highely likely that the CSI character is present for you, but you're not seeing it since you're not asking readline to quote the input properly.
Ctrl-W deletes words.
Ctrl-u deletes lines.
They're based on Emacs (M-w and M-u).
Related
When I use my Fish Shell on Linux Mint, using the Ctrl+Left or Ctrl+Right keys isn't moving the cursor to the previous or next word. It switches between an I and an N instead:
Here is the I and then the N:
I cannot do partial completion then, so it's really boring.
How can I fix this?
Glenn Jackman's comment is correct - you are using vi-mode.
Some third-party prompts (e.g. from Oh-My-Fish or similar) enable it for some reason.
To switch back, usually executing fish_default_key_bindings once interactively should suffice once you have deleted the offending line or package (search for fish_vi_key_bindings).
Or, if you like vi-mode, you can add a binding. Create a function called fish_user_key_bindings (e.g. with funced).
The content should look like this
function fish_user_key_bindings
bind -M $mode $sequence $command
end
where "$command" here would be "backward-word". $mode would be the vi-mode you want the binding to be valid for, e.g. "insert" or "default" (what vi would call "normal" mode).
"$sequence" would be the text sequence that the terminal sends to fish whenever this key combination is pressed. Unfortunately they aren't standardized, so you need to figure out which it is on your system.
fish_key_reader is useful here - execute it, press the combination and use what it tells you. On my terminal ctrl+left sends \e\[1\;5D (and ctrl+right sends the same with C instead of D).
This is a most strange problem, which I only get it using GNU Screen and a Nokia N900. Under vi (both vim and nvi, it turns out) if I type in insert mode one<Enter>two I get
Mtwo
one
So, not only does <Enter> put an M at the beginning of the line, but actually it does something pretty weird in the meantime. Among other things, this issue doesn't let me save and exit.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
POSSIBLE ANSWER: It turns out I wasn't the only one having this issue, which is gone (at least in our case) by simply adding term xterm to your .screenrc. Sorry for not doing a more thorough search before asking...
Your <Enter> is like a carriage return and linefeed (<CRLF>). That's ASCII 10, followed by ASCII 13 (which is the CTRL-M you see). The screen, however, isn't supporting it. Try to do:
export TERM=vt100
then run vi, etc or just
TERM=vt100 vi
which should fix the behavior (assuming you have vt100 terminal capabilities).
Working on various GNU Readline-based CLIs and it would dramatically
speed me up if there was a way to have brackets and quotes
automatically closed when you type.
Thus typing a ' or ( on Bash (or other CLIs) would actually
append the closing quote or bracket '' or () and place the cursor
inbetween for writing.
I've looked around for quite some time trying to find out anything related
(e.g. ~/.inputrc setting), but didn't find anything and I wonder if that's
at all achievable. Any comments would be appreciated.
It's a bit tricky, but doable. As a bash command:
bind '"(" "\C-v()\e[D"'
bind '"\"" "\C-v\"\C-v\"\e[D"'
As a setting in .inputrc (so any program using readline gets the behavior):
"(": "\C-v()\e[D"
"\"": "\C-v\"\C-v\"\e[D"
You can prefix each key with Control-v to type "plain" quotes and left parentheses without triggering the auto-close behavior.
The above assumes Emacs keybindings. For vi bindings, use
bind '"(": "\C-v()\ei"'
bind '"\"" "\C-v\"\C-v\"\ei"'
or
"(": "\C-v()\ei"
"\"": "\C-v\"\C-v\"\ei"
Essentially, just replace the [D with i; instead of sending the escape sequence to move the cursor left, just send \e to drop back into command mode after inserting the parentheses/quotes, then re-enter insert mode, which should position the cursor inside the characters just typed.
Doing exactly what you want is impossible, but there is a work around.
Put this in inputrc:
"\C-x\"": "\"\"C-b"
Run:
info readline "comm" "readline init" "sample"
for the whole sample.
How can I bring back the last string I used for a search or a search&replace?
For example, assume that I enter :%s/some_text/some_other_text/gc and vim gives me the E486: Patterns not found: some_text error message back. I then realize that I actually meant to write some_magic_text instead of some_text. At that point, how can I get back my original string in the bottom command row (or whatever it is called) so I can change it and do a second search? Is there a nifty little command for that?
In this brief example it looks unnecessary, but when the text you are looking to replace is mighty long and you just typed one letter wrong, it is fantastically annoying to have to retype everything.
And I am using MacVim if that makes any difference.
From the normal mode, hit q/ to navigate through your search history!
Check out this vimvcast which explains what you want.
More generally, you can recall any command you have previously typed by entering the first few characters, and then use arrow multiple times to navigate in history.
In your case, you could type:
:%s<Up>
See :help history
This answer might be good an improvement to what you are after, after all.
Use search with highlighting, to interactively check if the regex you are crafting is definitely working, and then use it in a search-replace.
:se is (incsearch, better put se is in your .vimrc)
/<search term>
check with n/N if you are happy with the matches
:s%//<replace term>/g
When omitting the <search term> in the search-replace in 4., the last used search will be used.
For acessing the list of last (search-replace) commands use q:, or as already noted q/ for the list of last search terms.
Bonus:
When using :se gd, s/<search>/<replace> will behave as s/<search>/<replace>/g.
Accessing just the first search match in each line can then still be done with adding /g, so essentially both behaviours are just switched.
/ and then up to bring up the last search query.
In Unix the ^ allows you to repeat a command with some text substituted for new text. For example:
csh% grep "stuff" file1 >> Results
grep "stuff" file1
csh% ^file1^file2^
grep "stuff" file2
csh%
Is there a Vim equivalent? There are a lot of times I find myself editing minor things on the command line over and over again.
Specifically for subsitutions: use & to repeat your last substitution on the current line from normal mode.
To repeat for all lines, type :%&
q: to enter the command-line window (:help cmdwin).
You can edit and reuse previously entered ex-style commands in this window.
Once you hit :, you can type a couple characters and up-arrow, and it will character-match what you typed. e.g. type :set and it will climb back through your "sets". This also works for search - just type / and up-arrow. And /abc up-arrow will feed you matching search strings counterchronologically.
There are 2 ways.
You simply hit the . key to perform an exact replay of the very last command (other than movement). For example, I type cw then hello to change a word to "hello". After moving my cursor to a different word, I hit . to do it again.
For more advanced commands like a replace, after you have performed the substition, simply hit the : key then the ↑ up arrow key, and it fills your command line with the same command.
To repeat the previous substition on all lines with all of the same flags you can use the mapping g&.
If you have made a substitution in either normal mode :s/A/B/g (the current line) or visual mode :'<,>'s/A/B/g (lines included in the current selection) and you want to repeat that last substitution, you can:
Move to another line (normal mode) and simply press &, or if you like, :-&-<CR> (looks like :&), to affect the current line without highlighting, or
Highlight a range (visual mode) and press :-&-<CR> (looks like :'<,'>&) to affect the range of lines in the selection.
With my limited knowledge of Vim, this solves several problems. For one, the last visual substitution :'<,'>s/A/B/g is available as the last command (:-<UP>) from both normal and visual mode, but always produces an error from normal mode. (It still refers to the last selection from visual mode - not to the empty selection at the cursor like I assumed - and my example substitution exhausts every match in one pass.) Meanwhile, the last normal mode substitution starts with :s, not :'<,'>s, so you would need to modify it to use in visual mode. Finally, & is available directly from normal mode and so it accepts repetitions and other alternatives to selections, like 2& for the next two lines, and as user ruohola said, g& for the entire file.
In both versions, pressing : then & works as if you had pressed : and then retyped s/A/B/, so the mode you were in last time is irrelevant and only the current cursor line or selection determines the line(s) to be affected. (Note that the trailing flags like g are cleared too, but come next in this syntax too, as in :&g/: '<,'>&g. This is a mixed blessing in my opinion, as you can/must re-specify flags here, and standalone & doesn't seem to take flags at all. I must be missing something.)
I welcome suggestions and corrections. Most of this comes from experimentation just now so I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but hopefully it helps anyway.
Take a look at this: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_command-line_history for explanation.