til/unix/use-the-readline-keybindings-anywhere.md

Use The Readline Keybindings Anywhere

There are these features of the "shell" that I've often heard called emac keybindings. These are things like ctrl-a (move the cursor to the beginning of the line) and ctrl-e (move the cursor to the end of the line) that I use every single day. There are several others that are in my heavy rotation, however, I learned about a couple more reading through Shell Tricks That Actually Make Life Easier (And Save Your Sanity).

These are Readline commands (or keybindings) which means they are supported by anything that uses Readline under the hood. So while you might be using these to great effect in bash and zsh, you should look for other places they are available.

A non-exhaustive list includes:

• Ruby's irb
• python
• Node.js' node
• PostgreSQL's psql

And many more similar REPLs and command line tools.

Try these keybindings out in one of your favorites and when you're done hit ctrl-c to exit out of it.