The default interactive shell in Debian is Bourne Again SHell, so it worth to invest some time to at least skim through the available readline key sequences to gain higher proficiency at the command-line.
Navigating the command-line
Line
CTRL+a |
Move to the beginning of the line |
CTRL+e |
Move to the end of the line |
Word
ALT+f |
Move forward a word |
ALT+b |
Move backward a word |
Character
CTRL+f |
Move forward a character |
CTRL+b |
Move backward a character |
Jump to the mark
CTRL+@ |
Set position mark |
CTRL+xx |
Switch between current position and defined position mark
Jump to the beginning of the line if position mark is not set |
Jump to the next character occurrence
Ctrl+] |
A character is read and cursor is moved to its next occurrence |
Ctrl+ALT+] |
A character is read and cursor is moved to its previous occurrence |
Clear screen
CTRL+l |
Clear screen, but leave the current line at the top |
Command-line manipulation
Transpose
CTRL+t |
Transpose neighboring characters |
ALT+t |
Transpose neighboring words |
Change case
ALT+u |
Uppercase characters from cursor position to the end of the word |
ALT+l |
Lowercase characters from cursor position to the end of the word |
ALT+c |
Capitalize current or the following word starting from cursor position |
Delete
CTRL+d |
Delete character under the cursor |
ALT+/ |
Delete all spaces and tabulators around cursor position |
Expand
ALT+& |
Perform tilde expansion at the current word |
ALT+$ |
Expand variable name |
ALT+g |
The word before cursor is treated as a pattern for pathname expansion with an asterisk implicitly appended
The matching filename is inserted |
CTRL+x * |
The word before cursor is treated as a pattern for pathname expansion with an asterisk implicitly appended
The whole list of matching filenames is inserted |
CTRL+x g |
The word before the cursor is treated as a pattern for pathname expansion without an asterisk implicitly appended
The whole list of matching files/directories is displayed |
CTRL+ALT+e |
Expand the line as the shell does |
Cut and paste
CTRL+k |
Cut text from cursor position to the end of the line |
CTRL+u
CTRL+x BACKSPACE |
Cut text from the beginning of the line to cursor position |
CTRL+w
ALT+BACKSPACE |
Cut word before cursor position |
ALT+d |
Cut the word after cursor position |
CTRL+y |
Paste stored text |
ALT+y |
Rotate text to paste |
Undo
CTRL+_
CTRL+x CTRL+u |
Undo last edit operation |
ALT+r |
Revert line to its initial state [undo all changes] |
Miscellaneous
CTRL+v TAB |
Insert a tabulator character |
ALT+# |
Insert a comment at the beginning of the line
Store line in history |
CTRL+x CTRL-v |
Display Bash version |
Notes
This list is not meant to be complete, for more information read bash manual page.