You either want to place the following in ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc… I’ve found that while ~/.inputrc works sometimes, it doesn’t on all systems.

<br /> "\e[1~": beginning-of-line<br /> "\e[4~": end-of-line<br /> "\e[5~": beginning-of-history<br /> "\e[6~": end-of-history<br /> "\e[3~": delete-char<br /> "\e[2~": quoted-insert<br /> "\e[5C": forward-word<br /> "\e[5D": backward-word<br /> "\e\e[C": forward-word<br /> "\e\e[D": backward-word<br /> set completion-ignore-case On<br />

All lines except the last enable nice readline & bash cursor movement (control + arrow keys and what not) while the last line turns on case insensitivity for tab-completion, enabling you to have folders and files of mixed case characters while not having to type the capital letters. (You can have a directory called “Documents” and tab-complete by tying “doc<tab>

I’ve been enjoying the above for a while now, and I think it really should be the default settings for distributions.

Note: This works for Linux, Mac OS X, and *BSD. It might work for people using Bash on Windows, but you’re on your own there. (: