In all GUI text editors, web browsers and IDE’s you can move a cursor:

  • left/right arrows - move by char;
  • ctrl+left/right - move by word;
  • home/end - move to start/end of line.

Add Shift to any of above combination and everything you jumped through now is selected and you can: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X,Delete to copy/cut/delete selection.

Also, you can Ctrl+Delete and Ctrl+Backspace to delete a next/previous word.

Also, you can Ctrl+Home/End to jump to start of first line or end of last line.

I want this to work when I type in a command in my Terminal.

Is it possible in Linux? It’s a vanilla experience in Windows+Powershell, thanks to default PSReadlLine extension. It works both in conhost.exe and in Windows Terminal, but doesn’t work in WT + cmd.exe, which makes me think it’s PSReadLine which is responsible for this technological perfection.

“But you can’t copy with Ctrl+C, it’s…” - You can. When something is selected It copies selection to clipboard, otherwise it sends SIGINT.

I’m not bound to any distro or terminal application, but right now I don’t see these incredible text editing techniques working even in Ubuntu+Powershell+PSReadLine, to say nothing about the Bash. I’ve tried installing WezTerm, but it doesn’t have text selection either, at least by default. And I’m inclined to think it has nothing to do with terminal emulators at all, since it works in conhost.exe+Powershell.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlMEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    “But you can’t copy with Ctrl+C, it’s…” - You can. When something is selected It copies selection to clipboard, otherwise it sends SIGINT.

    What terminal emulator are you using where ctrl-c copies instead of sending SIGINT when text is selected? In every one I’ve ever used, ctrl-c still sends SIGINT even with text selected (and one must must use ctrl-shift-C/ctrl-shift-V to copy/paste).

    I don’t have any suggestion for getting the behavior you’re asking for, but besides the normal ctrl-(shift)-C/V clipboard FYI you also have two other types of clipboard-like things: one which works anywhere (not only in the terminal) and is actually always automatically copying anything you select and lets you paste from it with middle click (this originated with X Windows but i think most Wayland compositors have also implemented it by now), and another which is found in GNU Readline (used by bash and numerous other REPLs) called the “kill buffer” which can be pasted (or “yanked”) from and cut (or “killed”) to using Emacs keyboard shortcuts (which also include various cursor movement controls).

    Notes:

    • the kill buffer is local to a given readline context, it’s not shared across different shell windows.
    • the list of emacs keybindings in that wikipedia article i linked is currently confusingly referring to the kill buffer as “the clipboard”
    • you can drastically reconfigure your readline keybindings and other behavior by editing your .inputrc file, but you cannot achieve what you were originally asking for because there is no concept of text selection in readline.

    HTH!

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      24 hours ago

      What terminal emulator are you using where ctrl-c copies instead of sending SIGINT when text is selected?

      I know that the terminal emulator built into the JetBrains IDEs works that way…

    • podbrushkin@mander.xyzOP
      4·
      1 day ago

      What terminal emulator are you using where ctrl-c copies instead of sending SIGINT when text is selected?

      This is what I experienced in conhost.exe (legacy windows console experience, predecessor of Windows Terminal) + Powershell. In windows terminal it works this way too. This is why I suspect it’s related not to terminal itself (conhost.exe/wt.exe/gnome terminal etc), and not to specific shell (bash/powershell), but to an extension for shell (ReadLine,PSReadLine).

      As for various types of buffers and clipboards, I always felt like one system-wide clipboard with clipboard history is enough. When I cut something from terminal, quite often I paste it into another app, and not back to terminal.