How can I quickly delete the trailing pathname component in ido-mode?

Question

I use ido-mode for finding files and directories, which is generally very efficient in terms of keystrokes.

The one annoyance I've found is when deleting the trailing pathname component when using ido-find-file. E.g., if the minibuffer contains /some/long/directory/path/and.some.long.file.name, I would like to quickly delete and.some.long.file.name with a single keystroke. It seems hard to believe that this isn't built-in, but if so I haven't found the keybinding for it.

Is there a quick way to erase the trailing file name, or another efficient way of dealing with this?

Answer 1

I didn't find a built-in way to do that (well M-^ C-k seems to work, but that's a little bit hacky). That said, implementing it doesn't look too difficult. I believe the following would do:

(defun ido-clear-fname ()
  (interactive)
  (setq ido-text-init ""
        ido-exit 'refresh)
  (exit-minibuffer))

(define-key ido-common-completion-map (kbd "<C-M-backspace>") 'ido-clear-fname)

Answer 2

M-backspace (Alt+Backspace) is quite efficient. It'll kill whole words instead of single characters. It's perhaps not a single key solution in your case, but you can use it pretty much everywhere in Emacs or in shell.

Answer 3

I found in my .emacs the following function which does work as expected:

(defun kill-back-to-indentation ()
  "Kill from point back to the first non-whitespace character on the line."
  (interactive)
  (let ((prev-pos (point)))
    (back-to-indentation)
    (kill-region (point) prev-pos)))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-M-<backspace>") 'kill-back-to-indentation)

Yes, this function is not ido-specific but rather for general purposes.