HPR2073: The power of GNU Readline - part 1

The power of GNU Readline - part 1

We all use GNU Readline if we we use the CLI in Linux because it manages input, line editing and command history in Bash and in many tools.

I have been using Unix and later Linux since the 1980's, and gradually learnt how to do things like jump to the start or the end of the line, delete a character backwards up to a space, or delete the entire line.

I think that learning GNU Readline is worthwhile since it contains a lot more features than what I just described. I thought I would do a few episodes on HPR to introduce some of what I consider to be the most useful features.

I want to keep the episodes short since this is a dry subject, and, if you are anything like me, you can't take in more than a few key sequences at a time.

The source of my information is the GNU Readline Manual. This is very well written, if a little overwhelming.

To read the rest of the notes for this episode follow this link.

Links

• Wikipedia article on GNU Readline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline
• GNU Readline manual: https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html

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