Does ctrl-A and ctrl-E on a mac work the same as HOME and END on Windows

keyboard

Coming from a Windows Machine to a Mac – one of the things I missed was the HOME and END keys when editing a text document.

Then I discovered:

ctrl-E # move cursor to end of line
ctrl-A # move cursor to beginning of line

Which seems to do the same thing.

I'm wondering if this making too much of an assumption or I'm missing something. Although I've tested it, I'm asking the question because there might be a different scenario I've missed that makes it different.

My question is: Does ctrl-A and ctrl-E on a mac work the same as HOME and END on Windows?

Best Answer

In fact this convention is coming from the Emacs text editor on Unix. Windows copied it 30 years later :).

Of course, this is working in:

emacs

and these 2 shells which inherited the editing line shortcuts of emacs:

bash
zsh

and these Apple graphical interface software:

Calendar
Messages
Notes
TextEdit
LibreOffice
Pages
Finder

On the other hand, this convention is failing in:

vi

and I suspect in some other softwares which have their own set of shortcuts without enough freedom to keep these very old and useful ones.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Remap “Home” and “End” to beginning and end of line

The default shortcuts for moving to beginning or end of (wrapped) lines are ⌘← and ⌘→. ⌥↑ and ⌥↓ or ⌃A and ⌃E move to the beginning or end of unwrapped lines (or paragraphs). ⌥← and ⌥→ move backwards/forward by words, and all of these are compatible with holding Shift to select during the corresponding moves.

You could remap home and end by creating ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and saving a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "\UF729"  = moveToBeginningOfLine:; // home
    "\UF72B"  = moveToEndOfLine:; // end
    "$\UF729" = moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:; // shift-home
    "$\UF72B" = moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:; // shift-end
}

Most of the keybindings for editing text in OS X are defined in /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict.

Applying changes requires reopening applications. DefaultKeyBinding.dict is ignored by some old versions of Xcode (works with latest version 6.3.1), Terminal, and many cross-platform applications.

See Cocoa Text System and my website for more information about the customizable keybindings.

Terminal's keybindings can be customized in Preferences > Settings > Keyboard. \033OH moves to the beginning of a line and \033OF to the end of a line.

In Eclipse, key bindings should be modified in Preferences > General > Keys. You need to modify default bindings for commands Line Start and Line End (replace ⌘← by ↖ and ⌘→ by ↘). For selection to work, also modify Select Line Start and Select Line End.

PS: You may need to logout and login again for the ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict change to take effect.

Windows – Make Mac OS X “Option-Arrow” work like Windows “Ctrl-Arrow”

Here's how you can get ⌃ Control+arrow keys to work like you describe. Copy the following property list into ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (you can create the directory if it doesn't already exist):

{
    "^\UF703" = ("moveWordForward:", "moveWordForward:", "moveWordBackward:");
    "^$\UF703" = ("moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:", "moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:", "moveWordBackwardAndModifySelection:");
}

This will set up ⌃ Control+arrow to navigate to the beginning of the next word (by using OS X's normal navigation three times: to the end of the current word, end of the next word, then back to the beginning of the next word). I also included a version that works with ⇧ Shift so you can select text as you go.

Caveat: this will only work in Cocoa apps, but I think the normal ⌥ Option+arrow navigation does too. Also, make sure to relaunch your apps!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Remap “Home” and “End” to beginning and end of line

Windows – Make Mac OS X “Option-Arrow” work like Windows “Ctrl-Arrow”

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