What is a key, if on command line I have to trverse left & right word by word, instead of character by character?
I have found it -
Esc + w = fwd traversal
Esc + b = bwd traversal
I tend to run my command line in vi mode via, 'set -o vi'. It removes the need for the Esc and all vi's wonderful shortcuts work.
Keith
Agreed 
(Except you still need to press Esc to get into "command mode" ;))
With vi mode, you can use e, b and w to traverse the line by word, and then h and l to move char by char....
Cheers
ZB
Good point 
this works great in ksh, but in csh it is not working.
i used setenv -o vi, which is ok, but then when I use esc on the command line i get ^[
any ideas?
Use tcsh instead, and then type
bindkey -v
If you like it, add it to your shell's initialisation files....
Cheers
ZB
rock on tcsh is wicked awesome