Linux Tips: Keyboard shortcuts and command line tricks

In this article I will show you some keyboard shortcuts and other command line tricks to make entering commands easier and faster. Learning them can make your life a lot easier!

Here are some keyboard shortcuts you can use within terminal:

Alt-r              Undo all changes to the line.
Alt-Ctrl-e        Expand command line.
Alt-p              Non-incremental reverse search of history.
Alt-] x            Moves the cursor forward to the next occurrence of x.
Alt-Ctrl-] x      Moves the cursor backwards to the previous occurrence of x.
Ctrl-a             Move to the start of the line.
Ctrl-e             Move to the end of the line.
Ctrl-u             Delete from the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl-k             Delete from the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl-w            Delete from the cursor to the start of the word.
Ctrl-y             Pastes text from the clipboard.
Ctrl-l              Clear the screen leaving the current line at the top of the screen.
Ctrl-x Ctrl-u    Undo the last changes. Ctrl-_
Ctrl-r              Incremental reverse search of history.
!!                   Execute last command in history
!abc               Execute last command in history beginning with abc
!n                  Execute nth command in history
^abc^xyz       Replace first occurrence of abc with xyz in last command and execute it