[tshadwell]

in a similar vein, I often close browsers with ^W, expecting to delete a word. Thanks Vim.

[andrewstuart2]

And bash, and bc, and anybody else who uses readline [1] or its conventions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline

[matejn]

This actually works on OpenBSD, along with ^A, ^E and ^U, in Firefox and Chromium. I suspect it might work on a macOS too, but I haven't tried.

[kminehart]

Wow I've been annoyingly using DE to delete a word.

Thanks for this.

[andrewstuart2]

FYI, this only works in insert mode, for the word you just typed (equivalent to ctrl-backspace, basically). And diw/diW (delete inner word, delete inner non-space-characters-word) may actually be faster depending on the context since you don't need to get to the beginning of the word.

[serf]

if it makes you feel better, I often try to close a terminal tabs with ^W from browser habits and delete words ;)

[simon1573]

Time to rewire that brain of yours to use 'daw' instead.