Cursor Movement Basics

So far you've been typing commands and pressing Enter. But what happens when you type a long command and realize there's a typo near the beginning? You could hold Backspace and retype everything, but that's slow and frustrating. Learning to move your cursor efficiently through a command is the first step toward real terminal speed.

The most basic cursor movement uses the Left and Right arrow keys. Each press moves the cursor one character in that direction. This lets you position the cursor exactly where you need to make an edit, insert text, or delete a character.

Left Arrow   Move cursor one character left
Right Arrow  Move cursor one character right
Home         Jump to the beginning of the line
End          Jump to the end of the line

The Home key jumps your cursor all the way to the beginning of the line, and the End key jumps it to the end. These are great when you need to make a quick edit at either end of a long command without arrow-keying across the entire line.

Time to practice. The terminal is pre-loaded with a long command, but there's a typo at the very beginning — ehco instead of echo. Use the Home key (or Left arrow) to move your cursor to the start, fix the typo, and press Enter.