How to configure Ctrl+backspace Linux behavior in macOS terminal? I was using Windows and Ubuntu previously and in their terminal, when I used to press Ctrl + Backspace it used to delete the last word till any punctuation. For example, if I had typed: 

ls -l /usr/local/foo 

on the terminal and pressed Ctrl + Backspace, then the result would be ls -l /usr/local/. 

I am very new to the Mac world and searched a lot of places but I could not find this behaviour. I did find that Ctrl+W deletes the entire word till whitespace and the result would be ls -l. 

I would like to keep this Ctrl+W behaviour as well as get back the Ctrl + Backspace behaviour that I had on Windows and Ubuntu.

How can I achieve this?
To get this to work the way you want, you have to set the option key to be used as a Meta key. To do this:


Launch Terminal
Go to Terminal > Preferences...
Select the Profiles icon at top
Select the profile you're using from the lefthand side
Click on the Keyboard tab on the righthand side
Now tick the Use Option as Meta key checkbox at bottom of the screen
Exit preferences


Now to achieve what you want, do as follows:

Press option + delete to delete back one word