Clear the characters before the current cursor position in Zsh

Question

In bash pressing CTRL + U clears the characters on the line before the current cursor position while in zsh this will clear the entire line. How do I clear the characters on the line before the current cursor position by pressing CTRL + U in zsh?

That's the default behaviour with both emacs and vim keybindings. What does bindkey "\Cu" report? — muru, Jun 19 '18 at 11:17
Answer is simple: run bindkey \^U backward-kill-line. @muru "^U" backward-kill-line — menteith, Jun 19 '18 at 11:18
In MacOS, Ctrl+U also works in Zsh. In Windows it's simply Esc. — Cees Timmerman, Mar 09 '23 at 10:42

abu_bua · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-23T23:18:33.817

20

Bash and zsh work slightly different here. In zsh, CTRL + U clears the entire line instead.

Add these lines into your configuration .zsh:

bindkey -e
bindkey \^U backward-kill-line

You can use

$ bindkey

to list all of your keyboard shortcuts in zsh.

BTW: in bash you will print all bindkey with the following command:

bind -P

So no cheat sheets are necessary!

edited Aug 23 '22 at 23:18

answered Jun 19 '18 at 12:28

abu_bua

10,783

works like a charm!! – alexzander Jun 11 '21 at 14:09

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 19 '21 at 02:47

6

In zsh, Alt+W deletes the from the cursor back to the beginning of the current word.

edited Aug 19 '21 at 02:47

saedx1

103
4

answered May 20 '20 at 19:36

brz

161
1
1

That is an important answer that gives the WHY, thanks for this precision – itMaxence Apr 04 '23 at 16:12
On my Mac Alt defaults to option for alternate characters. Esc+k works though. – Karl Mar 27 '24 at 23:41

Clear the characters before the current cursor position in Zsh

2 Answers2