Clear the characters before the current cursor position in Zsh

Question

In bash pressing CTRL + U clears the characters on the line before the current cursor position while in zsh this will clear the entire line. How do I clear the characters on the line before the current cursor position by pressing CTRL + U in zsh?

Answer 1

Bash and zsh work slightly different here. In zsh, CTRL + U clears the entire line instead.

Add these lines into your configuration .zsh:

bindkey -e
bindkey \^U backward-kill-line

You can use

$ bindkey

to list all of your keyboard shortcuts in zsh.

BTW: in bash you will print all bindkey with the following command:

bind -P

So no cheat sheets are necessary!

Answer 2

In zsh, Alt+W deletes the from the cursor back to the beginning of the current word.