How do delete highlighted text in a command line

Question

So I was trying to delete a portion of a command line command, but when I type backspace(delete option), it merely deselect the portion rather than delete the selected text as I expected. Is there a shortcut to use in the command line to delete the portion of the command that has been highlighted(selected?)

Answer 1

Terminal doesn't really care what you have selected, other than you can copy selected - it uses the cursor position for operations.

Opt ⌥ → or ← will jump the cursor one word at a time
Ctrl ⌃ W will delete the word immediately left of the cursor
Cmd ⌘ A or E will take you to the beginning or end of a line
Ctrl ⌃ U will delete to the beginning of the line
Ctrl ⌃ K will delete to the end of the line

There are many more - see TechRepublic - 20 Terminal shortcuts developers need to know

Answer 2

solution 1

• Use ConEmu - https://conemu.github.io/
  • It allows you to delete selected text (for the current-entering command line)
    • Note1: it requires you to: use keyboard shift+arrow to select, not mouse select
    • Note2: actually, you can delete selected text with mouse,
      but first you need to click precisely & release the click, and to ensure the move of the vertical text caret is at the precise starting position of a char
      -- the text caret must visibly be the vertical one, not the block one;
      (and then drag from that precise starting position to the correct ending position);
      otherwise you cannot del; idk why
  • It can move caret by mouse click.
    • Note:
      • some are language specific behavior, though most of the functionalities are presented in each language.
      • eg: in powershell, you can click move the text caret; but in git.bash, you cannot. though both can delete highlighted text.
  • For Windows user only.

solution-workaround 2

• For Linux, ctrl+w deletes the word;
• For Windows Powershell, Ctrl+Backspace deletes the word;

solution-workaround 3

• To better modify your cmd like a normal editor, I recommend:

  1. write the line of cmd on a file,
  2. then use an IDE that supports directly send the whole line of cmd to your terminal.
     -eg: workbench.action.terminal.runSelectedText in Vscode (or other IDE like Intellij idea)

• (or just write and exec in a bat/bash file...)