RTEMS GNU Tools On-Line Library

Readline Killing Commands

Debugging with GDB

21.2.3: Readline Killing Commands

Killing text means to delete the text from the line, but to save it away for later use, usually by yanking (re-inserting) it back into the line. If the description for a command says that it `kills' text, then you can be sure that you can get the text back in a different (or the same) place later.

When you use a kill command, the text is saved in a kill-ring. Any number of consecutive kills save all of the killed text together, so that when you yank it back, you get it all. The kill ring is not line specific; the text that you killed on a previously typed line is available to be yanked back later, when you are typing another line.

Here is the list of commands for killing text.

C-K: Kill the text from the current cursor position to the end of the line.
M-D: Kill from the cursor to the end of the current word, or if between words, to the end of the next word.
M-DEL: Kill from the cursor the start of the previous word, or if between words, to the start of the previous word.
C-W: Kill from the cursor to the previous whitespace. This is different than M-DEL because the word boundaries differ.

Here is how to yank the text back into the line. Yanking means to copy the most-recently-killed text from the kill buffer.

C-Y: Yank the most recently killed text back into the buffer at the cursor.
M-Y: Rotate the kill-ring, and yank the new top. You can only do this if the prior command is C-Y or M-Y.

Debugging with GDB