Hello

Traditionally in bash if you wanted to copy/paste a word you would hover the mouse above the source word and double click to select that word. In newer (at least debian based) installs I have found that if that word is followed by a colon then the colon is also included in what has been selected.
For example:

cat /etc/passwd | grep nobody
nobody:x:65534:65534::/tmp:

if I hovered the mouse above "nobody" and double right click, "nobody" was selected ...
If I now do the same thing in 4.9.0-264-antix.1-amd64-smp (and several others) the whole line is selected...

How can I delimit what is selected by considering the colon as if it were a space like in the good old days?

Thanks

C

A quick google found me:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...terminal#45927

Should get you started at least

Sometimes the most benign threads open my eyes to things I hadn't even considered.
Thank you folks.

This is a feature of the terminal emulator software you are using, not the shell.
So, post #2 should indeed get you started.

In XFCE4-Terminal, the word definition can be customized under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Double Click

Then remove the colon or any other problem characters.

The process should be rather similar for other terminals. Which terminal emulator are you using?

additionally: double click selects word, triple click selects the whole line (probably it depends on the emulator too).
as it was mentioned you can specify word delimiters, which can influence how double click works (also depends on the emulator).
Especially if you remove colon from this list double click will select the whole line (of /etc/passwd).

You can also, in most terminal emulators, use a left-click and hold to drag the highlight for what you want to copy (instead of hovering) then once highlighted a right click should bring up a menu to select copy.

That's complicated, left, drag, right, left, double right is the speed freak's preference. Not that I care or do that.
EDIT: I consider myself complex, as such I go the complicated route