How To Use Vim Mode On The Command Line In Bash

Introduction

Learn how to use Vi mode on the command line in Bash.

Vim lovers rejoice.

Did you know you can use Vim mode on the command line?

After I found out you could enable Vim mode in bash
set -o vi is always the first line I add to by .bashrc.

In this article I will go over

• Movement
• Editing
• Searching

By default, the Bash command line uses Emacs style keyboard shortcuts, such as CTRL+A to go to the beginning of the line and CTRL+E to go to the End of the line.

Here is a small table that shows a comparison of the Emacs style keyboard shortcuts and the Vim equivalent on the command line.

Emacs	Vim	Result
Ctrl+A	0	Move cursor to beginning of line.
Ctrl+E	$	Move cursor to end of line.
Alt+B	b	Move cursor back one word.
Alt+F	w	Move cursor right one word.
Ctrl+B	h	Move cursor back one character.
Ctrl+F	l	Move cursor right one character.
Ctrl+P	k	Move up in Bash command history.
Ctrl+R	j	Move down in Bash command history.

Add this line to the bottom of your .bashrc file.

set -o vi

Source your .bashrc file to make the changes take effect.

$ source ~/.bashrc

After adding that line and sourcing the .bashrc file, you now have Vim commands available on the Bash command line.

You can perform a variety of commands Vim users are used to on the command line.

If you are a Vim user already you know about command mode and insert mode. By default, in the Bash command line you are in insert mode.

You must press ESC to enter command mode.

By the way, I am currently using Bash version 5.2.9.

$ bash --version | head -1

GNU bash, version 5.2.9(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

Movement

This is how you move around.

Out of the four Vim movement keys h j k l only h and l work to move the cursor left and right.

First press the ESC key to make sure you are in command mode.

$ Move the cursor to the end of the line.

0 Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.

W Move to the next word using space character as the delimiter.

w Move to the next word or special character.

B Move back one word using space character as the delimiter.

b Move back one word or special character.

^ Move to the first non-blank character at the beginning of the line.

f<character> Find occurrence of the next character.

Examples

ft finds the next occurrence of the letter t.

f" finds the next occurrence of the double quote character ".

; Press semi-colon to move to the next occurrence of the character.

F<character> Performs a backward search for a character.

Examples

Ft finds the next occurrence of the letter t backward search.

F" finds the next occurrence of the double quote character " backward search.

; Press semi-colon to move to the next occurrence of the character.

Editing

This is how you edit text.

x Delete a single character under cursor.

X Delete the previous character.

I Enter insert mode with the cursor at the start of the line.

A Enter insert mode at the end of the line to append text.

cc Change the whole line. The whole line is deleted and puts you in insert mode.

C Change text from the cursor to the end of the line.

ea Move cursor to the end of the word and enter insert mode to append text.

y Yank (copy) word under cursor.

Y Yank (copy) from the cursor to the end of the line.

p or P Paste the text you copied.

r Replace the single character under the cursor.

R Replace the characters under the cursor as you type.
This is like pressing the insert key on the keyboard while in a document editing program such as Libreoffice or Microsoft Word.

. Repeat the last command by pressing the period character. This is one of the most useful commands in Vim.

u Undo last command. You can press this key multiple times to go back in time.

~ Toggle the case of the letter under the cursor.

dd or D To delete the whole line.

dw Delete current word under cursor.

d3w Delete three words.

c2w Change two words. This deletes two words and puts you in insert mode.

y2w Yank (copy) two words.

xp Transpose letters.

Searching

This is how you search for a previous run command.

You can search for commands by pressing forward slash / and typing a part of a command you ran.
It will find the last command you ran with the matching string.

I want to search for the last gunicorn command so I type /gunicorn and press ENTER.

Conclusion

If you enjoy using the Vim text editor you will be happy to know that you can also use a few Vim commands on the command line.

View my .vimrc file.

Follow me on Github and DEV.to.

Comments

[Doug B]

Good little description.

BUT

There is ONE thing. This is NOT VIM mode. It's VI mode.
For instance you cant press escape and do ciw to change inner word. That works in vim but not in vi.

[brandon_wallace]

You are correct.

[Matthieu Cneude]

Nice article!

You can do the same if you use Zsh. I've written an article how to configure Zsh without oh-my-zsh, and I speak about Zsh vi mode too: thevaluable.dev/zsh-install-config...

[brandon_wallace]

Mathhieu, thank you for sharing! The article you wrote is well written and packed full of information. I saw the Vi mode part. The changing cursor depending on the Vi mode is a great idea. I see we have some of the same Git aliases. Check out my configuration articles for my .bashrc and my .vimrc.

Bashrc Customization Guide – How to Add Aliases, Use Functions, and More

freecodecamp.org/news/bashrc-custo...

Vimrc Configuration Guide - How to Customize Your Vim Code Editor with Mappings, Vimscript, Status Line, and More

freecodecamp.org/news/vimrc-config...

[Peter Benjamin (they/them)]

For users who have built years of muscle memory using emacs-y shortcuts in bash, like ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-k, ctrl-u, ctrl-w, alt-f, alt-b ... and so on, you can have best of the both worlds by using the shortcut ctrl-x ctrl-e which will edit current bash readline in $EDITOR.

You can see a demo of it in this blog post: dev.to/chhajedji/bash-edit-command...

[m]

"There is no up and down on the command line so j and k don't do anything."
well they do cycle throw the history for me [bash version 5.0.17]

[brandon_wallace]

Thank you. j and k do indeed move through the command history. I have updated the article to include the new information.

I use this a lot in my .bashrc

function hg() {
    history | grep $1;
}

and this to run the second to last command

$ !-2

Now I can use the j and k keys.

[brandon_wallace]

Thank you sir, I have updated the article to fix the issue.

[ab-the-dev]

I have a question tho, what does command mode do, it doesn't seem to do anything and I can't quit it.

[brandon_wallace]

Thanks for leaving a comment.

Command mode allows you to move the cursor on the command line with the movement keys. Press a, A, i, or I to exit command mode.

[Md. Mohiuddin]

We use CTRL+L to clear the screen. How to do it here?

[Smeagol]

While in command mode you should be able to just use ^L to clear the screen. (This is what worked for me on WSL Ubuntu 22.04.1 with bash version 5.1.16.

[brandon_wallace]

@smeagol correct. CTRL+L works to clear the screen.

[Josh Duffney]

For anyone wondering how to copy an entire line just do y$ or y^.

[Peter Vivo]

yy to copy full line, p for paste

[kesnar]

Nice article...

But I can't seem to be able to yank and paste between different terminals....each one seems to have it's own clipboard.
Anyway to fix/change this?

[brandon_wallace]

@kesnar I believe to copy and paste between terminals you have to highlight your text with the cursor, then click CTRL+SHIFT+c to copy and CTRL+SHIFT+v to paste. You might even need to hold down the SHIFT key while you highlight your text.

[itsgabz]

I never knew the search function existed, love it, thank you very much, what a time saver.