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Control-Key Shortcuts

Christian Kent

Here are some two-finger combinations26.1 that can save you some time. You might not discover these for a year or two unless you

Key Combo General Usage
Ctrl-A Jump to beginning of line (home key)
Ctrl-E Jump to end of line (end key)
Ctrl-B Back one character (left arrow)
Ctrl-F Forward one character (right arrow)
Ctrl-P Previous line (up arrow)
Ctrl-N Next line (down arrow)
Ctrl-H Delete the character to the left and move left (in other words, the backspace key)
Ctrl-K Cut from here to the end of the line
Ctrl-W Cut from here to the beginning of the line
Ctrl-U Clear entire line
Ctrl-L Clear or refresh screen (the boss key!)
Ctrl-I Tab key (very underappreciated by some)
Ctrl-G The ``bell'' key, to recreate a system beep
Ctrl-X Execute (context-specific and probably powerful)
Ctrl-S Stop something scrolling
Ctrl-R Resume something (usually scrolling, but ``any key'' is usually okay)
Ctrl-Q Resume scrolling (when Ctrl-R doesn't do it)
Ctrl-M Return key
Ctrl-C Cancel this operation, in an abnormal way
Ctrl-D Cancel this operation, in a normal way; close this session; finish this file; and so on
Ctrl-Z Suspend this operation. Probably the most powerful since the OS likes to keep this one to itself so you can multi-task programs. Upshot of which, is that it's more often available than Ctrl-C.

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