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There is Ctrl-y for pasting deleted strings, which goes along very well with these commands:

  Ctrl-k      delete to end of line
  Ctrl-u      delete to beginning of line
  Alt-d       delete to end of word
  Ctrl-w      delete to beginning of word
  Alt-Backspc same

Bash keybindings behave like Emacs by default, hence every time you invoke one of these, it will put the string into a buffer, which can be later pasted using Ctrl-y.

This is very useful. For instance, if you remembered that you didn't `mkdir /mnt/disk` while in the middle of the command `mount /dev/sdb /mnt/disk`, you can delete what you have already typed with Ctrl-u; issue `mkdir /mnt/disk`; than you can paste the previous command with Ctrl-y. Very useful and I use it all the time! (Ctrl-u have never tied to my muscle memory, so I usually do Ctrl-a Ctrl-k to move to the beginning of the line and delete what comes next).

Other tips:

  cd            goes to home dir
  Ctrl-]        moves cursor to character (such as vim f)
  Ctrl+Meta+]   moves to character backwards (vim F)

I also put these in my .bashrc for searching history pressing up/down.

  "\e[A": history-search-backward 
  "\e[B": history-search-forward

This is different of searching with Ctrl-r. When you type part of a command, such as

  mkdir /dev

and press up, it will complete with previous ocurrences of commands starting with `mkdir /dev`. It is faster than Ctrl-r if you already know what to do.

  "\e[A": history-search-backward 
  "\e[B": history-search-forward

These have to go in `~/.inputrc`, right?

That's right! Sorry for the late reply.

Here are some notes I took about ZSH that may be helpful to someone

* zsh bang

previous commands:

   !!  Previous command
   !-1 Previous command
   !-2 Second previous command

Getting individual arguments:

   !$   Last arg
   !*   All args
   !$:h Last argument, strip one level
   !!:1 First arg

Modifying commandlines

   !ls:$:h             Head
   !ls:$:t             Tail
   !ls:$:r             Rm Suffix
   !ls:$:s/user/dude/  Substitute user by dude

* Filename Modifiers

  :h	head (dirname)
  :t	tail (basename)
  :e	extension
  :r	remove extension

  :l	lowercase conversion
  :u	uppercase conversion

  :p	print command but do not execute
  :q	quote substituted words

* zsh globbing

  **/* 	Picks out all files and directories, recursively.
  ***/*	Ditto, following symlinks
  *	Any string, including the null string.
  ?	Any character.
  [...]	Any of the enclosed characters. Ranges of characters can be specified by
  separating two characters by a -.
  [^...]	Inverse
  [!...]	Inverse
  <x-y>	Any number in the range x to y, inclusive. Either can be omitted.
  ^x	Anything except the pattern x.
  x|y	Either x or y.

  x#	Zero or more occurrences of the pattern x.
  x##	One or more occurrences of the pattern x.

globbing qualifiers

* file type

    (.) 	Regular files
    (/)     Directories
    (@)     Symlinks
    (=)	Sockets
    (p)	Named pipes
    (%)	Device
    (%b)	Block devices
    (%c)	Character devices

* permissions

    (r)     Readable by owner
    (w)     Writable by owner
    (x)     Executables by owner
    (R)     Readable by world
    (W)     Writable by world
    (X)     Executable by world
    (A)	Readable by group
    (I)	Writable by group
    (E)	Executable bu group

alternatively a chmod style syntax is supported:

    ls **/*(.:g-w:)

* Ownership

    (U)		Your own user
    (G)		Your own group
    (u:userid:)	User with userid
    (g:userid:)	group with groupid

example: list files belonging to user www-data with ls -l /(u:www-data:)

Modification and access time

    (m)	Modification time
    (a)	Access time

    (-)	Before
    (+)	After

    (M)	Months
    (w)	Weeks
    (h)	Hours
    (m)	Minutes
    (s)	Seconds

example: list files accessed last month with ls /(.aM-1)

file size

    (L)	File size (defaults to bytes)
    (k)	use kilobytes
    (m)	use megabytes
    (p)	use 512-byte blocks

example: list all files larger than 10 megabytes with ls /(.Lm+10)

dos2unix /~.(gif|png|jpg)(.) # ~ excludes

dos2unix (#i)/~.(gif|png|jpg)(.) # case-insensitive

ls =bob # Lists file anywhere in $PATH

ls /some_file # Lists file under current directory zargs -- /(.) -- ls -l # Ditto

* zsh Iteration

  for i (/home/**/q*) rm $i
  for i in /**/b*(u:miklophone:); do rm $i ; done
  for f in http://zsh.sunsite.dk/Guide/zshguide{,{01..08}}.html; do...
  zargs -- /**/b*(u:miklophone:) -- rm

* Renaming files with Zsh

Numerical prefix:

   $  i=1; for j in *; do mv $j $i.$j; ((i++)); done

   $  i=1; for f in *; do mv $f $(echo $i| awk '{ printf("%03d", $0)}').$f;
   ((i++)); done

   $  integer i=0; for f in *; do mv $f $[i+=1].$f; done

Rename all files from name.mp3 to Name.mp3:

   $  zmv `([a-z])(*).mp3` `${(C)1}$2.mp3`

Capitalize file

   $  zmv '([a-z])(*).pdf' '${(C)1}$2.pdf'

Replaces spaces with underlines

   $  zmv '* *' '$f:gs/ /_'

FOO to foo

   $  for i in *(.); mv $i ${i:l}

Rename pic1.jpg to pic0001.jpg ...

   $  zmv 'pic(*).jpg' 'pic${(1:4::0:)1}.jpg'
   $  zmv '(**/)pic(*).jpg' '$1/pic1:4::0:)2}.jpg'  # recursive

Remove spaces from filenames

   $  for a in ./**/*\ *(Dod); do mv $a ${a:h}/${a:t:gs/ /_}; done

Substitute r for l

   s/l/r[/]

   Unless preceded immediately by a g, with no colon between, the
   substitution is done only for the first string that matches l. For
   arrays and filename expansion, this applies to each word of the
   expanded text.

   The left-hand side of substitutions are not regular expressions,
   but character strings.

   Any character can be used as the delimiter in place of '/'. A
   backslash quotes the delimiter character.

   The character '&', in the right-hand-side r, is replaced by the
   text from the left-hand-side l. The '&' can be quoted with a
   backslash.

* zsh if # see also -z below

  if [[ $foo = '' ]]; then
  print The parameter foo is empty
  fi

# quote the term to avoid pattern matching (not regexp, btw)

  if [[ biriyana = b* ]]; then
  print Word begins with a b
  fi

# Numbers

  if [[ $number -gt 3 ]]; then
  if [[ $number -lt 3 ]]; then
  if (( $number > 3 )); then
  if (( 3 )); then

# Files

  if [[ file1 -nt file2 ]]; then		# newer than
  if [[ file1 -ot file2 ]]; then		# older than
  if [[ file1 -ef file2 ]]; then		# same file

# Variables

  if [[ -z "$var is blah; test fails" ]]; then		# zero length?
  if [[ -n "$var is blah; test passes" ]]; then		# non-zero length?

For all but the simplest renaming tasks, I use "qmv" (from the renameutils[1] package). It loads up the target filenames/paths in a buffer in your $EDITOR, and then you can use the full power of your editor to rename. When you save the buffer, qmv does a sanity check and then does the actual renaming.

Here's a simple example: [2], but it can get arbitrarily complex -- in a much more visual and interactive way than what a shell alone would be capable of.

[1] - http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/en/man1/qmv.1.html

[2] - http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1136/batch-renaming-...

Ctrl+l clears screen. This is very useful even if you are inside a REPL like python, ruby, mysql, etc...