Deleting Text From The Right Side of The Cursor

Question

Level 1

9 points

Deleting Text From The Right Side of The Cursor

When I am in a text document of some type, I know that the DELETE key will remove text to the left of the cursor, but I cannot quite figure out how to delete characters to the right of the cursor. In the PC world there are both delete and backspace keys. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thank very much, in advance for your kind help.

Cheers,
Austin

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 27, 2011 3:33 AM

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Answer 1

Bob Lang1

Level 5

4,090 points

Feb 27, 2011 5:02 AM in response to ausmoran

Hi ausmoran

A lot of users don't know this, but many OS X apps (especially those written by Apple) implement a sub-set of the "emacs" editor command set.

These editing commands are usually introduced by holding the CTRL key, and pressing a letter (I'll use ^ to show this). Some of the most useful are:

^A Move cursor to start of line
^E Move cursor to end of line
^D Delete one character to the right (which is what you asked for)
^K Kill (delete) the rest of the line
And many others!

Amazingly, you can even use these commands to edit the URL address line in Safari.

Learning a handful of these commands can really speed up your use of OS X apps.

Bob

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Answer 2

ausmoran Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 27, 2011 3:52 AM in response to gumsie

Thanks for your response. I am on the macbook so I don't have a numeric keypad, etc. I finally figured out the way to do it is to FN+DELETE and that works just fine.

Have a great day!

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