Readline shortcuts

Readline Keyboard Shortcuts

For MacOS, replace Ctrl with Cmd, and Meta with Option.

Shortcut	Comment
`Ctrl`+`A`	Beginning of line
`Ctrl`+`B` / `←`	Backward one character
`Meta`+`B`	Backward one word
`Ctrl`+`C`	Send io.EOF
`Ctrl`+`D`	Delete one character
`Meta`+`D`	Delete one word
`Ctrl`+`E`	End of line
`Ctrl`+`F` / `→`	Forward one character
`Meta`+`F`	Forward one word
`Ctrl`+`G`	Cancel¹
`Ctrl`+`H`	Delete previous character
`Ctrl`+`I` / `Tab`	Command line completion
`Ctrl`+`J`	Line feed
`Ctrl`+`K`	Kill² text to the end of line
`Ctrl`+`Y`	Yank³ text back onto command line
`Ctrl`+`L`	Clear screen
`Ctrl`+`M`	Same as Enter key
`Ctrl`+`N` / `↓`	Next line (in history)
`Ctrl`+`P` / `↑`	Prev line (in history)
`Ctrl`+`R`	Search backwards in history
`Ctrl`+`S`	Search forwards in history
`Ctrl`+`T`	Transpose characters
`Meta`+`T`	Transpose words
`Ctrl`+`U`	Kill text to the beginning of line
`Ctrl`+`W`	Kill previous word
`Backspace`	Delete previous character
`Meta`+`Backspace`	Kill previous word
`Enter`	Line feed
`Ctrl`+`_`	Undo edits

Same as Escape ↩
Killing text means to delete the text from the line, but to save it away for later use, usually by yanking (re-inserting) it back into the line. (‘Cut’ and ‘paste’ are more recent jargon for ‘kill’ and ‘yank’.) ↩
Yanking means to copy the most-recently-killed text from the kill buffer ↩