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Re:Moving efficiently in the CLI by c256 on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:04AM (#16245892)
In addition to the control- versions, there are meta- and control+alt- versions that work the same way in greater logical units. For example, moving forward by 1 character/word/sentence-or-expression uses different modifiers for the same keybinding. In Emacs, these consistenly pervade the interface, so, for example, paragraphs in text modes are akin to blocks in or functions in programming modes (depending on if the language is block or function based). This is one reason that Emacs tends to swallow other user interfaces for dedicated Emacs users — everything is highly consistent, and you get a giant head-start on a new systems. Of course, it helps that Emacs is massively customizable, so when something doesn’t quite do what you want, it’s usually a very small bit of hacking to change that.

Historically, many of those keybindings date back to very crude remote terminals where control codes and tty modes were a real concern. For example, I’ve used systems (in the 90’s) where the delete key could freeze your remote connection. Emacs, because of it’s age and ubiquity, has grown up somewhat “around” those traps.

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