Macaulay2 » Documentation
Packages » Macaulay2Doc » setting up Macaulay2 » using Macaulay2 in a terminal
next | previous | forward | backward | up | index | toc

# using Macaulay2 in a terminal

Macaulay2 can be used in a terminal window if care is taken not to display very wide objects, Some answers in Macaulay2 can be very wide, but many of them will be wrapped appropriately to fit in the width of a terminal window. See invoking the Macaulay2 program for optional arguments which you may use when starting Macaulay2 in a terminal.

### Using keyboard shortcuts

Macaulay2 uses the Readline and History libraries to handle user input in a terminal window. These libraries provide an array of keyboard shortcuts for command-line editing and accessing the history interactively, making the user interface consistent with other terminal-based programs.

Here are a summary of most useful keyboard shortcuts.

`Ctrl-a` | -- move to the start of the current line
`Ctrl-e` | -- move to the end of the line
`Ctrl-r` | -- search backward in the history for matching commands
`Ctrl-k` | -- kill (cut) the rest of the line
`Ctrl-y` | -- yank (paste) into this position

For more information, refer to the documentation for the Readline user interface, which can also be read from a terminal with the command `info readline`.

### Using tab-completion

Macaulay2 supports auto-completion in the terminal. For instance, type `hilb` and press the `TAB` key to automatically complete to `hilbert`, then press `TAB` a second time to get a list of the possible completions:

    i1 : hilbert<TAB><TAB>
    hilbertBasis       hilbertFunction    hilbertPolynomial  hilbertSeries

    i1 : hilbert

The source of this document is in /build/macaulay2-88fgJW/macaulay2-1.25.11+ds/M2/Macaulay2/packages/Macaulay2Doc/ov_getting_started.m2:162:0.