Below are some essential shortcuts built-in in Bash (and in Zsh), which enables a user to quickly move around the current command, edit it, and utilize previous commands.

Going through previous commands (history)

Typically, if you are about to execute a curl or some long command or kubectl commands, it would be best to check command history to see if you have already executed it previously.

Ctrl-r # Search commands backward in history
!!     # Get the previous command

Going through bash history — Ctrl+r & !! access history

Note: In above demo you see history of 10+ commands starting with echo showing up as I type, usually you will only see 1 command. If you want above behavior install install (Command-line fuzzy finder) fzf

Also, having the below configurations at ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc will help have more history commands.

# Appends every command to the history file once it is executed
setopt inc_append_history
# Reloads the history whenever you use it
setopt share_history
# save each command's beginning timestamp and the duration to the history file
setopt extended_history
setopt hist_ignore_all_dups

Moving around the current command

Now let’s say you have a long command to move around the command; if you are using arrows, it will be time-consuming. Below shortcuts will help move around the current command quickly.

Ctrl-a # Go to the start of the command
Ctrl-e # Go to the end of the command
Alt-f  # Go forward one word
Alt-b  # Go back one word

Going through current command — Moving arount in current command

Editing current command

If you want to delete a word or the rest of the command, check the below shortcuts.

Ctrl-k # Cut from cursor to end of command
Ctrl-u # Cut from cursor to start of command
Alt-d  # delete one word forward
Ctrl-w # delete one word backward
Ctrl-y # paste last cut word/line

Editing current command in Vi editor

Above shortcuts like Alt-d & Ctrl-w will work, but let’s say you want to edit the current command in an editor.

Ctrl-x, e # Edit previous command in Editor

Note: If you are using ZSH, then add below lines in ~/.zshrc for above to work

autoload -U edit-command-line
zle -N edit-command-line
bindkey '^xe' edit-command-line
bindkey '^x^e' edit-command-line

Also, you need to set the editor (you can change this to emacs)

export EDITOR='vi'

Retrieving previous command arguments

If you created a directory or a file in a previous command and want to quickly access previous command arguments like file name or folder name, then check the below shortcuts.

!*    # Get all previous arguments
!:0   # Get just the command of the previous command
!:1   # Get the first argument of the previous command
!:2-$ # Get the second argument to last from the previous command
!^    # Get the first argument of the previous command
!$ :  # Get the last argument of the previous command
Alt-. OR ESC-. # Get last argument of the previous command (on repeat will go to through history of arguments)
^abc^def       # Substitute first occurrence of abc in the previous command with def$!!:s/abc/def/ # Same as above
!!:gs/abc/def/ # Does the same as above but replaces all occurrences of abc with def

Retreiving previous command args — Retreiving previous command arguments

for above !! and !# use :h for head of the word and :t for the tail of the word

Undo all the changes done on the current command

You made a lot of changes and want to undo the last 3 edits on the current command

C-x, C-u or C-_ : Undo changes done

Undo all changes — C-x, C-u, C-_ to undo

Quickly jumping to the recent directory

If you are in the workspace directory and want to jump to previous directory quickly, you can use cd -, which toggles between the current $PWD and $OLDPWD