this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
28 points (93.8% liked)

Programmer Humor

32426 readers
718 users here now

Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] abraham_linksys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Ctrl+a - go to beginning of line (alpha? I dunno)

ctrl+e - go to (e)nd of the line

alt+f - (f)orward one word

alt+b - (b)ack one word

You might already know these but no one else has posted them on this thread yet. I work in both Linux and Mac a lot and this works for them. No idea about Windows I'm no longer forced to use it at work ๐Ÿ™‚

[โ€“] NaiveBayesian@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also Ctrl + w to delete one word backwards (which is what OP wants to do).

Edit: Nvm I misread the post, deleting is not what OP wants to do. Still gonna keep this because Ctrl + w is easily the readline shortcut I use the most.

[โ€“] dot20@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you use WSL (which you should), you have a normal Bash, so it works

The best part of Windows is the part that isn't Windows lmao lawd I'm glad I don't work for the federal government (exclusively Microsoft) anymore

[โ€“] MrMonkey@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Works the same as M-b for me (backwards-word)

Make sure your /etc/inputrc or ~/.inputrc contains

# mappings for Ctrl-left-arrow and Ctrl-right-arrow for word moving

"\e[1;5C": forward-word

"\e[1;5D": backward-word

"\e[5C": forward-word

"\e[5D": backward-word

"\e\e[C": forward-word

"\e\e[D": backward-word`
[โ€“] lemann@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lemmy:

> meme with problem

> SolutionCommentMemeCommentCommentMemeQuestion

Others:

> meme with problem

> BotCommentCommentAwardsAwardsBotShitpostAwardsShitpost

I hope the formatting shows properly... And thanks for this ๐Ÿ˜ now to update the .inputrc on my laptop and VPSes

Edit: fix typo and formatting

[โ€“] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's why my terminal is emacs

I think you mean OS

[โ€“] grue@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Emacs and bash use the same navigation shortcuts though, LOL.

[โ€“] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Bold of you to assume that an Emacs user will have anything remotely resembling the default keymap by the time they're proud enough to brag about it

[โ€“] mawkler@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago
[โ€“] james@lurk.fun 1 points 1 year ago
[โ€“] maeries@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] gornius@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because terminal emulators are literally the old terminal emulators (ye oldy screens + keyboard combos that looked like a computer but were just IO) and everything modern they do is just a hack.

[โ€“] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Terminals with screens? What's all that newfangled shit?

Nah, whippersnapper, this tech goes all the way back to teletypes. You didn't get a fancy-shmancy "screen;" instead, it printed out the results of your commands. On actual paper!


Seriously though, that's why the device files for terminals in Linux are named tty[$NUM] -- "tty" is shorthand for "TeleTYpe."

I believe it's also why really primitive programs can't scroll up and do things like writing an entire screen worth of content in order to emulate interactivity (as opposed to seeking the cursor backwards and replacing only the parts the program wants to replace): they're using a version of the control protocol so primitive that it didn't have a function to go backwards because teletypes didn't need it due to physical impossibility. (That's my theory, anyway -- I haven't dug deep enough into the guts of TERMCAP etc. to be sure. I'm also not actually old enough to have experienced that stuff, despite my joke above.)


Edit: look at this excerpt from man terminfo(5), for instance:

Basic Capabilities
The number of columns on each line for the terminal is given by
the cols numeric capability.  If the terminal is a CRT, then the
number of lines on the screen is given by the lines capability.
If the terminal wraps around to the beginning of the next line
when it reaches the right margin, then it should have the am
capability.  If the terminal can clear its screen, leaving the
cursor in the home position, then this is given by the clear
string capability.  If the terminal overstrikes (rather than
clearing a position when a character is struck over) then it
should have the os capability.  If the terminal is a printing
terminal, with no soft copy unit, give it both hc and os.

To this day, the info database entry for your virtual terminal has to specify that it's capable of deleting a line of text instead of merely striking it out, because some terminals back in the day actually couldn't!