The bind
command in Bash is used to set or display keyboard shortcuts and key bindings for the command line interface. It allows users to customize their shell experience by creating shortcuts for frequently used commands or functions.
The basic syntax of the bind
command is as follows:
bind [options] [arguments]
-P
: Display the current key bindings.-q
: Query a specific key binding.-x
: Bind a command to a key sequence.-f
: Read key bindings from a file.-s
: Bind a string to a key sequence.To display all current key bindings, you can use the following command:
bind -P
To check what command is bound to a specific key sequence, use:
bind -q <key_sequence>
For example, to query the binding for Ctrl+X
, you would run:
bind -q "\C-x"
You can bind a specific command to a key sequence. For example, to bind Ctrl+L
to clear the terminal, use:
bind -x '"\C-l": clear'
To bind a string that can be inserted into the command line, you can use:
bind -s '"\C-h": "Hello, World!"'
Now, pressing Ctrl+H
will insert “Hello, World!” into the command line.
If you have a file with predefined key bindings, you can load them using:
bind -f /path/to/bindings_file