22

How to configure zsh such that Ctrl+Backspace kills the word before point? How to achieve that Ctrl+Delete kills the word after point?

I use urxvt as terminal emulator.

student
  • 18,305
  • 1
    Firstly, you should define "word". Is it only alphabetic characters? All non-space characters? – Mikel May 07 '11 at 09:19
  • word like it is used in emacs terminology – student May 07 '11 at 09:31
  • If none of the solutions below work refer to: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21252419/in-zsh-how-do-you-bind-ctrlbackspace-to-delete-the-previous-word. – AP. Sep 20 '19 at 02:02

6 Answers6

23

Add the following to your ~/.zshrc

bindkey '^H' backward-kill-word
bindkey '5~' kill-word
rysama
  • 331
18

I'll focus on Ctrl+Delete first.

The zsh command to delete a whole word forwards is called kill-word. By default it is bound to Alt+D.

How to make Ctrl+Delete do it too depends on which terminal emulator you are using.

On my system, this works in xterm and Gnome Terminal:

bindkey -M emacs '^[[3;5~' kill-word

and for urxvt, you should do:

bindkey -M emacs '^[[3^' kill-word

If that doesn't work, try typing Ctrl+V Ctrl+Delete to see what the value is on your system.

You could even add both of those together to your .zshrc, or use the output of tput kDC5 instead of hard-coding the sequence.

Ctrl+Backspace seems harder.

On my system, pressing that is the same as pressing just Backspace.

If yours is the same, I think your best option is to use Alt+Backspace or Ctrl+W instead.

Mikel
  • 57,299
  • 15
  • 134
  • 153
8

On urxvt, for the deleting backwards part, I simply have in my .zshrc the following:

bindkey '^H' backward-kill-word

and it allows me to delete the previous word with ctrl+backspace

benterris
  • 191
2

I've got this in my .Xresources:

URxvt.keysym.C-BackSpace:       \033[33~

and that in my .zshrc:

bindkey -M main -M viins -M vicmd   '^[[33~'    backward-kill-word

This kills each whitespace seperated word. Note that '^[' is the Escape character. You have to xrdb -load .Xresources, open a terminal and then hit ^V followed by ^BackSpace.

jchnkl
  • 21
1

Type showkey -a in your zsh, and enter the key combination(s) that you want (e.g. Ctrl + Backspace). I'm also using zsh and for me:

Ctrl + Backspace is ^H

Ctrl + Delete is ^[[3;5~

Then in your .zshrc file, add these lines:

# Ctrl+Backspace: kill the word backward
bindkey -M emacs '^H' backward-kill-word
bindkey -M viins '^H' backward-kill-word
bindkey -M vicmd '^H' backward-kill-word

Ctrl+Delete: kill the word forward


bindkey -M emacs '^[[3;5~' kill-word
bindkey -M viins '^[[3;5~' kill-word
bindkey -M vicmd '^[[3;5~' kill-word
AdminBee
  • 22,803
dean
  • 11
  • 1
1

In fact the output of showkey -a on my Kali is:

  • Ctrl+Backspace is ^?

  • Backspace is ^H

So the accepted answers here just made my Backspace to delete words.

For anyone that happens to have the same behavior, add in your ~/.zshrc file this line:

bindkey '^?' backward-kill-word
G. Sapph
  • 11