murex rocks

Welcome

About

Install

Change Log

Blog

Technical Docs

Language Tour

Interactive Shell

Rosetta Stone

User Guide

Commands

Types

Open Source

GitHub repo

Search Site

User Guide: Terminal Hotkeys

A list of all the terminal hotkeys and their uses

Terminal Hotkeys

tab: autocomplete

Provides autocompletion suggestions. Press esc to hide suggestions.

ctrl+c: kill foreground process

Pressing this will send a kill (SIGINT) request to the foreground process.

ctrl+d: end of file

Send EOF (end of file). If the shell is sat on the prompt then this will exit that running session.

ctrl+f: search autocomplete suggestions

This will allow you to perform a regexp search through the autocompletion suggestions. Thus allowing you to quickly navigate complex command options or jump to specific sub-directories.

Press esc to cancel regexp search.

ctrl+r: search shell history

This brings up your timestamped shell history as an autocomplete list with regexp search activated. Using ctrl+r you can rapidly rerun previous command lines.

Press esc to cancel history completion.

ctrl+u: clear line

Clears the current line.

ctrl+\: kill all running processes

This will kill all processes owned by the current murex session. Including any background processes too.

This function is a effectively an emergency kill switch to bring you back to the command prompt.

Use sparingly because it doesn’t allow processes to end graceful.

ctrl+z: suspend foreground process

Suspends the execution of the current foreground process. You can then use job control to resume execution in either the foreground or background. (read more)

esc (aka “vim keys”)

Pressing esc while no autocomplete suggestions are shown will switch the line editor into vim keys mode.

Press i to return to normal editing mode.

Supported keys

• a: insert after current character
• A: insert at end of line
• b: jump to beginning of word
• B: jump to previous whitespace
• d: delete mode
• D: delete characters
• e: jump to end of word
• E: jump to next whitespace
• h: previous character (like 🠔)
• i: insert mode
• I: insert at beginning of line
• l: next character (like 🠖)
• p: paste after
• P: paste before
• r: replace character (replace once)
• R: replace many characters
• u: undo
• v: visual editor (opens line in $EDITOR)
• w: jump to end of word
• W: jump to next whitespace
• x: delete character
• y: yank (copy line)
• Y: same as y
• [: jump to previous brace
• ]: jump to next brace
• $: jump to end of line
• %: jump to either end of matching bracket
• 0 to 9: repeat action n times. eg 5x would delete five (5) characters (x)

Full Screen Editing via $EDITOR

When in “vim keys” mode, press v to bring up the visual editor. The editor will be whichever command is stored in the $EDITOR environmental variable.

See Also

• murex’s Interactive Shell: What’s different about murex’s interactive shell?