RFE: Enable Shell Hotkey: ctrl+u

RFE: Enable Shell Hotkey: ctrl+u

[Todd E Thomas]

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I'm emailing about some hotkey/shortcuts. From section 8.3.1 Readline Init
File Syntax <https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html>:

   1. *Ctrl + U* Deletes before the cursor until the start of the command
      1. *Control-u: universal-argument Meta-Rubout: backward-kill-word*
      2. *Ctrl + K* Deletes after the cursor until the end of the command

*Ctrl + K* seems to be implemented in zsh but *Ctrl + U* seems to be a bit
flaky. It should behave as listed above but, what it's actually doing is
killing all words in the line.

I see how it's described in 4.2.2: Deleting
<https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Guide/zshguide04.html> but that's pretty terse;
not sure what to do with that.

*Request for Enhancement*
Please implement the *Control-u* functionality as described above. Or,
given the functionality exists, simply bind to *ctrl+u* by default.

I hear this as an occasional complaint from a few of us old geezers (like
me) who have a lot of muscle memory invested into these shortcuts. Time to
ask for help :-)

--
Thanks in advance,

Todd Thomas

*"It's a frail music knits the world together."-Robert Dana*

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Re: RFE: Enable Shell Hotkey: ctrl+u

[Bart Schaefer]

On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 5:47 PM Todd E Thomas <todd.dsm@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Please implement the Control-u functionality as described above. Or, given the functionality exists, simply bind to ctrl+u by default.
>
> I hear this as an occasional complaint from a few of us old geezers (like me) who have a lot of muscle memory invested into these shortcuts. Time to ask for help :-)

This is as it is because of even older geezers who have muscle memory
for the way "stty kill" works, and for 4.x BSD where ^U is the kill
character by default.  Of course it can be argued that stty kill
deletes the whole line only because it's not possible for the cursor
to be anywhere other than at the end of the line in the stty driver,
so the readline choice is not entirely unreasonable.

Anyway, you're looking for
bindkey ^U backward-kill-line