Realizing...

@Alice Yeah but you don't want to re-type the whole thing, do you?

Okay, how would you know how many characters you've deleted if you're at a password prompt that doesn't even display characters?

Control+U?

Ctrl + W

Control the D

@Alice yep, bcz some apps read kbd_dn or kbd_up only. Without looping events on long presses. And some terminals do that too. For instance terminal over remmina-vnc over remmina-rdp.

@DrDonkey depending on current xterm or vt state you might just end up typing yet another char --- ^U (\x15)

@netikras yes. Everyone is different.
I'd die if ctrl u didn't work.

@DrDonkey I'm not sure you got me. Control chars can be intercepted by VT. Whether they are or not depends on VT configuration. All cli applications leverage it heavily to provide a nice interface: non-visual pw inputs, ctrl-u, ctrl-d and other combinations, colors on terminal, etc. All these are achieved by changing VT configurations and sending it control chars.

If you did cat /dev/random there's a giid chance your ^u will no longer work. It's because some random byte will change VT's configuration to treat ^u as a normal char rather that a control char.

Some cli apps might try to read all bytes from stdin, including the control ones, like ^u. Some apps might not do that, but previously ran app changed vt config before exitting. Eithet way c-u won't work as you'd expect. So don't get used to oh-so-handy shortcuts as they might stop working when you need them the most.

I got you the first time. @netikras

@DrDonkey Ctrl+U cuts it into the clipboard.

And i thought i was the only one, yet they have a meme for that XD