Bash – Delete backward until met a char, like alt + bksp

If you're an Emacs user, my answer probably isn't something you'll want to use, but it should still be noted on this page so here it is:

You can use vi keybindings in a bash shell very easily. Type set -o vi. Add it to your .bashrc if you like the results.

The answer to your specific question, delete forward to the next space, is accomplished with dt<Space> (delete till space) or just dE (delete to end of space-delimited Word).

Standard vi keybindings are used—the main thing to get used to (if you're a vi user already) is that you'll be in insert mode by default. So to use a Normal-mode command such as the above, type <Esc> first. Alternatively, you can hold down the Alt key while typing the first letter of your command. For instance, k is the vi command to go up one line, so <Alt>k can be used just like the up arrow—to go back one command in your history.

You're giving the keystrokes, but not the readline bindings, this can explain differences in observed behaviour (try bind -p).

The only way I can think of to do exactly what you ask is to use a custom completion function that saves the buffer state, and a separate key binding which invokes a companion shell function to restore it.

In addition to @Mark Plotnick's excellent suggestion to use menu-complete, other readline/bash options are:

• shell-backward-kill-word this removes a "shell word" which in the case of an expanded file or path will be the complete file or path name
• backward-kill-word this removes a "readline word", which in the case of a file or path will be a file or directory name component, including the trailing /
• undo which undoes each change atomically, but this almost certainly requires several attempts to fully remove a complete expansion, this is almost certainly the function you have bound to to ctrl-_ (bash default)
• set-mark and kill-region are lesser used readline features, set-mark marks the current cursor position, and kill-region deletes from the mark to the cursor. This requires you to invoke set-mark (default meta-space) in advance so that you can later use kill-region to delete back to it (no default binding)
• possible-completions (bound to meta-=) which lists the completions without modifying the command buffer

You could also write your own function to modify the input buffer, and bind it to a function (here's one I made earlier) but I don't see how that would be very much better than backward-kill-word in this case.

You can test bindings on the fly without using .inputrc using bash's bind command, e.g.:

bind "\C-o: backward-kill-word"
bind "\C-o: shell-backward-kill-word"

backward-kill-word is the best fit, default binding is metactrl-h. set-mark/kill-region would be better, but I can't think of a neat way to automate the use of this though.