Bash – Briefly jump to matching parentheses in Bash

bashinputrcreadline

In vim there is an option called showmatch. When you type a closing parenthesis in insert mode, this jumps the cursor to the matching opening parenthesis (at the same nesting level), then back again. This is very useful with languages like prolog and lisp, and is often present in their REPLs. Does Bash have a similar feature? I wonder if this might be part of readline, because the SWI-prolog interpreter does it, and as far as I know, also uses readline. If it is part on readline, which options do I need to set in my .inputrc?

Best Answer

The question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47358440/blink-matching-paren-not-working-in-readline-prompt lists as part of the question the readline setting

set blink-matching-paren on

which I have tried, and produces the result I was expecting.

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Bash has readline commands that aren't bound by default. You can find them at reference: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bindable-Readline-Commands.html#Bindable-Readline-Commands

The command you are looking for is called shell-backward-kill-word. You have to select a shortcut first. Let's use Ctrlp, since it's "previous command" - same as up arrow.

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$if mode=vi
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Then, when changing it in bash on the fly, the .inputrc must be read again:

set -o vi
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