Terminal Cheatsheet

This is my cheatsheet for the bash terminal.

Cheatsheet

Default Keymaps

I haven’t shown all keymaps - these are just the ones I use.

Movement	Keymap
Move to start of line	Ctrl + a
Move to end of line	Ctrl + e
Move one word forward	Alt + f or Alt + <Right>
Move one word backward	Alt + b or Alt + <Left>
Move to first occurrence of “x”	Ctrl + ] + x
Move to previous occurrence of “x”	Alt + Ctrl + ] + x

Text Editing	Keymap
Cut from cursor to start of line	Ctrl + u
Cut from cursor to end of line	Ctrl + k
Cut the word before the cursor	Ctrl + w
Cut the word after the cursor	Alt + d
Paste deleted content into terminal	Ctrl + y
Open current command in $EDITOR	Ctrl + x + e

Notes:

• Cut operations copy to the terminal clipboard (e.g. use Ctrl + y to paste), which means it does not overwrite what is on your system clipboard!
• Add export EDITOR="nvim" to your ~/.bashrc to make Neovim your default terminal editor

Commands	Keymap
Show your last command	Ctrl + p or <Up>
Show your next command	Ctrl + n or <Down>
Auto-complete your command	Tab
List all possible auto-complete commands	Tab Tab
Reverse-i-search for a previous command	Ctrl + r
Cancel command	Ctrl + c
Clear the screen	Ctrl + l
Exit the terminal	Ctrl + d
Suspend current process (e.g. Neovim)	Ctrl + z

Other tricks

Here are some other terminal tricks I like to use - type these into the terminal.

Miscellaneous	Keymap
Reattach to suspended process	fg
Repeat last command	!!
Repeat last command but exclude first word	!*

Note: !! can be useful if you forget to run your command with sudo (e.g. sudo !!).