Selecting text while jumping with cursor in iTerm2

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I would like to know if it is possible to get text-editor-like functionality for selecting text in iTerm2. For example, in Sublime Text 3, I can do the following:

⇧ ⌥ → = Select word to the right of the cursor.

⇧ ⌘ → = Select entire line to the right of the cursor.

But I cannot for the life of me seem to do this in iTerm2. I can add actions that make my cursor jump over words, or jump to the end of the line, but not jump and select at the same time.

To be clear: I am not looking for an alternative to highlighting text in this manner (for example any method that begins with a ⌘ F search or that requires a mouse), I am looking for the exact functionality outlined above.

Best Answer

You can setup key shortcuts for this functionality in iTerm2.

In Prefs > Profiles > Keys you can assign keys to move the beginning or end of the selection by a single character, word, or line. No such keys are bound by default.

To make a shortcut for the precise text selection you are referring to you would assign the shortcuts to the following actions,

⇧ ⌥ → = Move end of selection forward, Move by word

⇧ ⌘ → = Move end of selection forward, Move by line

Source: https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-one-page.html

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MacOS – How to customize .inputrc to make Command-Delete and Option-Delete delete lines and words in iTerm 2

⌘← can be assigned to \eOH and ⌘→ to \eOF. You could assign ⌥← to \eb like in Terminal, but it doesn't work in vi mode or nano.

In emacs mode you could also add this to .inputrc:

"\e[1;9D": backward-word
"\e[1;9C": forward-word
"\e[3~": kill-word

C-v shows the escape sequence for the next key combination. ^[ is ESC in caret notation. bind -p prints currently bound commands.

Selecting a whole line of text, including the newline

What if you want to select 78 here (after having pressed ⇧↑)?

Or if you want to select both 12 and 78, on Windows you couldn't press shift+home and shift+end.

Methods like moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection: are unanchored in most applications, which means that they always extend selections. They are actually anchored in Xcode, TextMate, Sublime Text, and BBEdit, but I don't know any way to change the default behavior.

If you just want to make selecting and deleting lines easier, you can create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "~l" = selectParagraph:;
    "~z" = (selectParagraph:, deleteBackward:);
    "~x" = (selectParagraph:, cut:);
    "~c" = (selectParagraph:, copy:);
}

After reopening applications, ⌥L should select a line. See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html and http://lri.me/keybindings.html for more information.

Best Answer

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MacOS – How to customize .inputrc to make Command-Delete and Option-Delete delete lines and words in iTerm 2

Selecting a whole line of text, including the newline

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