How often do you take a step back and ask yourself if you are doing things the most efficiently? I am in a terminal a large part of my day; running tests, editing in Vim, running git commands, checking files, etc. Over the years I’ve built up shortcuts and workflows to keep me fast and focused on what I need done. But I still have lots to learn and sometimes it takes getting really annoyed with a repitious action before we finally realize there might be the a better way.
The other day I discovered CTRL+W
and CTRL+U
for the first time. CTRL+W
deletes the last word in the prompt. CTRL+U
will clear the current line.
Some other tips and tricks I have found helpful.
-
Use
TAB
to autocomplete commands/files etc. -
Use
CTRL+R
to search previously entered commands. -
You can repeat the last command you typed with
!!
, this is useful if you forgetsudo
, i.e.apt-get update
can be re-run withsudo !!
. -
Want just the last arg you entered? Use
!$
. A good example of this typingls ~/Documents/folder
and then wanting to change to that directory. You can do this withcd $!
.
Am I missing any good shortcuts? This is your reminder to keep learning and evaluating your tools.