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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

ctrl-a (beginning of line), ctrl-e (end of line), ctrl-k (kill/copy line), ctrl-y (yank/paste line) are standard emacs keybindings. On OS X, they work in any standard NS text field as well. More at http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html

BTW, when using screen, ctrl-a is its default action key, so use ctrl-a ctrl-a to send a real ctrl-a, or change the default screen action key in your .screenrc.

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> BTW, when using screen, ctrl-a is its default action key

This ends up annoying me on a regular basis. Let's say I want to make a directory and then go to it. I would type:

  mkdir foo<Ctrl-p><Ctrl-a><Alt-d>cd<Enter>

Except when using screen, <Ctrl-a><Alt-d> (really just <Ctrl-a>d) detaches the session. It's solved easily enough ("screen -r"), but it always yanks me out of my groove.

Put something like this in your .screenrc:

   escape "^^^^"

That will set the escape character to ctrl-carat instead of ctrl-a. To type a literal ctrl-carat, type it twice.

This is the same as:

   screen -e ^^^^

I prefer to bind it to ` with `` to send a real `. It makes it really easy to flip back and forth between two screen windows since last-window is now:

`q

Now I don't even have to use Ctrl. This takes a little getting used to, but I prefer to use $() instead of `` for shell scripts (I use bash/zsh) so I don't make use of ` that often.

I do have bindings on F11 and F12 to toggle the escape character between ` and C-o. (Just in case I need to paste something into a terminal with ` characters.)

(Note: This whole setup is ripped off from some StackOverflow or HN post.)

Ctrl-a ctrl-a toggles between screens; ctrl-a a sends a ctrl-a sequence to the terminal.

Another one to add to the list, when working in the shell, is ctrl-u. This sort of does the opposite of ctrl-k and clears everything from your cursor to the start of the line. I use it when I recursive-search then change my mind, or when I screw up a password when ssh'ing.

It's my understanding that these keycombo's are originally from the readline library. Other programs that have these combo's available are irrsi and bash but I love to know more!

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