When I am connected to my local Ubuntu dev server with putty (from my Windows 7 box) via SSH, the following key combinations don't work to move the cursor forward and backward on word boundaries:
The cursor only moves one character at a time. I'm using bash.
Add these two lines to your ~/.inputrc file on the destination machine:
"\eOD": backward-word
"\eOC": forward-word
To make sure that they are the correct sequences, at a Bash prompt, type Ctrl-V Ctrl-LeftArrow and Ctrl-V Ctrl-RightArrow, you should see:
^[OD^[OC
When you start a new session, the keys will be available or you can press Ctrl-xCtrl-r to re-read the ~/.inputrc file for the current session.
bind -P | grep kill-word to show you the existing key bindings for deleting whole words. You can change the bindings in a similar manner to my answer above, if needed.
Commented
Nov 2, 2011 at 15:46
backward-char and forward-char, so rather than just adding these lines, I had to replace the lines that already contained the bindings.
For the Linux console:
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line
"\e[5~": beginning-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history
"\e[3~": delete-char
"\e[2~": quoted-insert
Alt+BandAlt+Fwill move backward/forward one word. You can change to vi bindings if you want and move byw