I’m slowly making my way through the Linux Upskill Challenge, and coming across some basic stuff I’ve completely missed before.

On a professional basis, I’m using keyboard shortcuts all the time. Whether it’s snapping (super+arrow key), minimising open windows (super + d), or any of the myriad ctrl + ... combos that are second nature to most users. When it comes to the command-line however, I only knew one: ctrl+c. Whilst this has done me fine for the past ten years, there’s far more to prompt shortcuts. Although some of the below may have limited use-cases I have a new favourite way of clearing the prompt (ctrl+l).

Combo	Effect
ctrl + l	clear screen (equivalent to the clear command)
ctrl + z	send job to background (equivalent to appending a & to a command )
ctrl + d	Log out of the current session (equivalent to exit command)
ctrl + a	Move the cursor to the beginning of the line (equivalent to pressing the home key)
ctrl + u	delete backwards to the beginning of line
ctrl + k	delete forwards to the end of line
ctrl + w	delete previous word (like db in vi)
ctrl + left	move back one word
ctrl + right	move forwards one word
ctrl + y	pastes the buffered output of ctrl + [u | k | w]
ctrl + p	cycle through previous commands (similar to pressing the up arrow)
ctrl + n	cycle through next commands (similar to pressing the down arrow)
ctrl + r	reverse search history (like history | grep <search term> | sort -r)
ctrl + r	forward search history (like history | grep <search term>)
ctrl + s	suspend output updating screen
ctrl + q	resume output updating screen
ctrl +x,e	open $EDITOR