Re: [Help-bash] vim mode changes

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:25:53PM -0400, Chadwick Rogers wrote:
> But my scenario is slightly different.  Run bash in vi-mode, type "echo
> hello world", press enter, press up arrow on your keyboard, press the home
> key to jump to the beginning of the line followed by the right arrow to the
> end of 'hello' or press the left arrow to the end of 'hello', press ctrl+w,
> the word will not delete.

Those just are not vi editing commands or paradigms.  Those are emacs
editing paradigms.  You haven't even hit Esc at any point to switch
to command mode, let alone used a vi command like "dw" to delete a
word.

Here's how it works in vi mode, using vi editing paradigms:

echo hello world (Enter)
Esc k   # now you are on the previous command, at start of line
w       # now you are at the start of "hello".  Shift-W would also work.
dw      # delete the word "hello".  dW would also work.
Enter   # execute the command

Note the difference between "w" words and "W" Words.  The latter includes
all non-whitespace characters, while the former stops at many of the
punctuation characters.

The only time Ctrl-w does anything in vi mode is when you're typing
merrily along in insert/append mode, and you realize that you have
seriously mangled the previous word, to the point where you feel it
would be quicker to nuke the entire word and retype it, than to
backspace and correct it.  So you press Ctrl-w while you are still
in insert/append mode, and it acts like "pressing backspace a whole
bunch of times".  Then you can retype that word.

You don't use Ctrl-w after entering command mode and moving the cursor.

Don't believe me?  Go into an actual vi or vi-clone editor and try
it out.  Open a file with some text in it.  Go to the end of a line
with multiple words.  Press Ctrl-w.  Nothing happens!  Nothing is
supposed to happen.  Ctrl-w is not a command-mode command.  It's
cribbed from the "werase" feature of the terminal driver, and only
applies to insert/append mode.