How to delete part of a path in an interactive shell?

Question

Is there a shortcut in bash and zsh to delete one component of a path? For example, if I type ls ~/local/color/, and the cursor is at the end of line, is there a shortcut to delete the color/ at the end? Ideally I want solutions in both vi-mode and emacs-mode

Answer 1

The most commonly used commands in the default bash emacs mode, for most commonly used keyboards:

Movement

• Ctrl-p, or Up: previous command
• Ctrl-n, or Down: next command
• Ctrl-b, or Left: previous character
• Ctrl-f, or Right: next character
• Alt-b: previous word
• Alt-f: next word
• Ctrl-a, or Home: begin of command
• Ctrl-e, or End: end of command

Editing

• BkSpc: delete previous character
• Ctrl-d, or Del: delete current character
• Alt-BkSpc: delete word to left
• Alt-d: delete word to right
• Ctrl-u: delete to start of command
• Ctrl-k: delete to end of command
• Ctrl-y: paste last cut

Miscellanea

• Cltr-/: undo
• Cltr-r: incremental backward history search

Answer 2

There's also unix-filename-rubout for Readline!

# in ~/.inputrc
# press ctrl-b to delete unix filename parts
# see: man bash | less -p 'unix-filename-rubout' and
#      http://www.calmar.ws/vim/vi-bash.html
set editing-mode vi
set keymap vi
"\C-b": unix-filename-rubout

Answer 3

By default bash (and I'm guessing zsh) will be in emacs-mode. You could try something like this:

Esc + b will put the cursor back one word. Ctrl + k will delete until the end of the line.

Most modern shells (like bash) will implement advanced command line editing features. Those commands are either close to emacs editing (Ctrl +A for line beginning, Ctrl + E for line end, ...).

If you're familar with vi-like editors, you could try to allow vi-mode.

set -o vi

It gives your shell vi-like modes (command mode/insert mode), and you get access to the standard commands (d for delete, r for replace, ...)

In Vi Mode, here's how you would do what you described:

Esc (command mode); d; b.