Readline Movement Commands

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Readline Movement Commands

The previous commands are the most basic possible keystrokes that you need in order to do editing of the input line. For your convenience, many other commands have been added in addition to C-B, C-F, C-D, and Delete.

Here are some commands for moving more rapidly about the line.

C-A
Move to the start of the line.

C-E
Move to the end of the line.

M-F
Move forward a word.

M-B
Move backward a word.

C-L
Clear the screen, reprinting the current line at the top.

Notice how C-F moves forward a character, while M-F moves forward a word. It is a loose convention that control keystrokes operate on characters while meta keystrokes operate on words.