GNU / Linux Terminal Tips

I'm using GNOME terminal (bash) in Ubuntu. These tips should work on other terminals also.

Cursor Movement

You can navigate with the cursor using the same keystrokes as you would use in Emacs. A few examples:

C means the "Ctrl" key. M means the "Alt" key (meta key). Often the Ctrl key will act on one character (or smaller unit) and the Meta key (Alt) will act on one word (or larger unit).

• C-f — Forward one character.
• C-b — Backwards one character.
• M-f — Forward one word.
• M-b — Backwards one word.
• C-a — Move to the beginning of the line.
• C-e — Move to the end of the line.
• C-d — Delete one character.
• M-d — Delete one word.

You can also highlight text and use Ctrl-Shift-c to copy, and Ctrl-Shift v to paste (at least in GNOME Terminal in Ubuntu).

Scrolling the Terminal

To scroll the terminal text, use Shift-PageUp and Shift-PageDown. In GNOME terminal you can also use the mouse wheel to scroll.

Terminal History

Your computer stores a history of commands that you type. You can use the up arrow key or down arrow key to navigate through your history.

You can view your history by typing history in the terminal.

You can search for a previously typed command by using the key combination C-r (which means "reverse search" in Emacs).

You can also use grep to find previously typed commands like this: history | grep "search words here"

GNU / Linux documentation

Your computer has documentation built in. The two commands are man and info. For example, if you want to learn more about the history command, just type man history in the terminal. You could alternatively type info history.

info will give you an Emacs-style documentation browser. Navigate through the text with the Emacs movement keys (a few of which were listed above) and use the RET key to follow links which are marked by *. For more info you can type info info or man man in a terminal.