How to go back or forward a word in bash environment?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I move around the bash commandline efficiently?

In the Windows prompt, one can go back or forward one word by pressing ctrl and <-/->. What's the equivalent in a bash environment?

Solution

There is M-b and M-f for moving backwards and forwards to the current word, respectively. Here M is the Meta or Esc key or a combination, like Ctrl+Meta. The section Commands for Moving in the bash manpage lists these and other shortcuts available for moving on the bash shell.

The manual also describes how to customize your bash settings so you can use your known Ctrl + ←/→ to skip words.

Comments

[Admin]

duplicate: superuser.com/questions/113103/…

[user11671]

I tried Esc+b/f,not working .

[ayaz]

Try the Alt key as well. The meta key is also emulated with the alt or windows key on keyboards that have them.

[Dennis Williamson]

@user11671: Does bind -p|grep forward-word produce "\ef": forward-word (among other things)?

[Matthias Braun]

Alt + Shift is the meta key on my Gnome terminal.

[dougkramer]

To directly answer the user's question, this works for me in ~/.inputrc in Ubuntu: # Assign Ctrl-right-arrow and Ctrl-left-arrow move to next/previous word "\e[1;5C": forward-word "\e\e[C": forward-word "\e[1;5D": backward-word "\e\e[D": backward-word source: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=35154

[jojman]

Is there a way to navigate words as whitespace-delimited sequences of characters, and not as sequences of alphabetical characters?

[arka mandal]

@dougkramer how does that directly answer users question? that's about rebinding the command, whereas user is asking what is the default equivalent