Home and end keys with Terminal on macbook pro?

Question

I saw in other questions that home and end keys on a macbook pro can be emulated with fn + left arrow or fn + right arrow. Or sometimes with the apple key instead of fn. But none of that works in Terminal. I frequently need to go to the beginning or end of the line. And would also be nice to jump forwards or backwards by word.

How can I jump around on a line in Terminal?

Answer 1

Use control+a for HOME and control+e for END in Terminal.

Also use esc+f to move to the beginning of the next word and esc+b to move to the beginning of the current word. (you Must be careful about current and next)

Answer 2

It sounds like you are looking for some help using readline and bash, here is an insane list of keyboard stuff modified from: http://www.math.utah.edu/docs/info/features_7.html#SEC45

Ctrla Move to the start of the line.
Ctrle Move to the end of the line.
Escf Move forward a word.
Escb Move backward a word.
Ctrll Clear the screen, reprinting the current line at the top.

Ctrlk Kill the text from the current cursor position to the end of the line.
Escd Kill from the cursor to the end of the current word, or if between words, to the end of the next word.
EscDel Kill from the cursor the start of the previous word, or if between words, to the start of the previous word.
Ctrlw Kill from the cursor to the previous whitespace. This is different than EscDelCtrla because the word boundaries differ.

Ctrld Delete the character underneath the cursor.
Ctrl_ Undo the last thing that you did. You can undo all the way back to an empty line.

And, here is how to yank the text back into the line. Yanking means to copy the most-recently-killed text from the kill buffer.

Ctrly Yank the most recently killed text back into the buffer at the cursor.
Escy Rotate the kill-ring, and yank the new top. You can only do this if the prior command is Ctrly or Escy.

Answer 3

For those that prefer to use the arrow keys, hitting fnShift+Left Arrow will take you home on the command line. Similarly, fnShift+Right Arrow will take you to the end.

Answer 4

The other answers are great and more portable, but here's "the OS X way" for a regular keyboard (which is opposite of many other terminals). Try the following:

ShiftHome - Beginning of Line
ShiftEnd - End of Line

From http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/tech/macbits.html