Making shell life easier

Despite what most FreeBSD users say about bash, it is a very efficient and easy to use shell. I have spent many years changing between shells and have settled with bash mostly because I'm lazy and bash has the most shortcuts and features.

Here are the ones I use often ( some of these are not bash specific ):

Emacs key bindings ( default with bash on FreeBSD )
- ^r reverse history lookup
- ^w delete previous word
- ^k delete all words from current position to end of line
- ^y paste text ( from deleted word )
- alt backspace delete word to a space/tab or '/'

If you want to use vi key bindings you can enable this with 'set -o vi'


Bash Variables:
- $$ current PID
- $! PID of last command
- !$ last 'word' of last command

$ ls -ald /bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1024 Dec 31 05:23 /bin
$ ls !$ | grep rm
ls /bin | grep rm
rm
rmail
rmdir

- !cmd rerun cmd with the same arguments

$ ls -ald /bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1024 Dec 31 05:23 /bin
$ !ls
ls -ald /bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1024 Dec 31 05:23 /bin

- !! rerun the last command

$ ls -ald /bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1024 Dec 31 05:23 /bin
$ !!
ls -ald /bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1024 Dec 31 05:23 /bin