The command-line editor (+)

Command-line input can be edited using key sequences much like those used in GNU Emacs or vi(1). The editor is active only when the edit shell variable is set, which it is by default in interactive shells. The bindkey builtin can display and change key bindings. Emacs-style key bindings are used by default (unless the shell was compiled otherwise; see the version shell variable), but bindkey can change the key bindings to vi-style bindings en masse.

The shell always binds the arrow keys (as defined in the TERMCAP environment variable) to

down: down-history
up: up-history
left: backward-char
right: forward-char

unless doing so would alter another single-character binding. One can set the arrow key escape sequences to the empty string with settc to prevent these bindings. The ANSI/VT100 sequences for arrow keys are always bound.

Other key bindings are, for the most part, what Emacs and vi(1) users would expect and can easily be displayed by bindkey, so there is no need to list them here. Likewise, bindkey can list the editor commands with a short description of each.

Note that editor commands do not have the same notion of a ``word'' as does the shell. The editor delimits words with any non-alphanumeric characters not in the shell variable wordchars, while the shell recognizes only whitespace and some of the characters with special meanings to it, listed under Lexical structure.

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