VI Keybindings in your Shell

There was once a very sad point in my development career where if I made a typo earlier in one of my bash statements, I would have to hold the left arrow to get my cursor over to the problem area and fix it. Then, one fateful day, I discovered VI keybindings in the shell!

Activating VI Keybindings

To get VI keybindings working in your shell, simply execute

$ set -o vi

(If you decide you like vi keybindings in the shell and you want this mode enabled upon shell startup, append the command to your ~/.bash_profile for OS X and ~/.bashrc for linux ((Why the difference?))

Using the VI Keybindings

The shell will have normal/insert mode as expected. Here are the commands I use frequently:

i - enter insert mode
esc - back to normal mode

* IN NORMAL MODE *
cc - clear the current line and enter insert mode
 C - clear from cursor until the end of the line and enter insert mode
dd - delete the current line
 D - delete from the cursor until the end of the line
 w - next word
 W - next white-space delimited word
 b - previous word
 B - previous white-space delimited word
dw - delete word
cw - change word
fx - find the next occurrence of the character 'x'
Fx - find the previous occurrence of the character 'x'
 $ - move the cursor to the end of the line
 0 - move the cursor to the beginning of the line
 ; - repeat last find command (preserves direction)
 l - move cursor right
 h - move cursor left
 k - scroll up through command history
 j - scroll down through command history
 A - move the cursor to the end of the line and enter insert mode
 I - move the cursor to the beginning of the line and enter insert mode

* Numeric modifier keys work as well! *
5W - move forward five white-space delimited words. 

April 25, 2012