Not so stupid shell tricks

Slides and videos from a lighting talk on simple shell tricks

(using and navigating history and the commandline)

Below are all the keystrokes/commands in the presentation for quick reference

Start with a clean slate

Keystroke	Description
CTRL-l	clear the screen without using the clear command

Histroy

Keystroke /Command	Description
CTRL-p / CTRL-n	Go back in history list/go forward in history list
CTRL-r	Reverse search history.
^foo^bar	Replace ‘foo’ with ‘bar’ in first matching string of previous command
!!:gs/foo/bar/	Replace ’foo’ with ‘bar’ globally (for all matches of ‘foo’) in previous command (!!:s/foo/bar/ is the same as ^foo^bar)
!!	Refer to previous command (in full)
ESC . / ALT-.	Insert last argument to previous command (tap ESC then .)

Movement

Keystrokes	Descritption
CTRL-a / CTRL-e	go to beginning/end of line
CTRL-f / CTRL-b	move forward/backward one character
ALT-f / ALT-b	move forward/backwards one word
CTRL-d / CTRL-h	delete forward/backward from cursor one character
ALT-d / ALT-backspace	delete forward/backward from cursor one word
CTRL-w	alternate of ALT-backspace