Comment by imiric

Changing modes is a single key stroke away. That's hardly a reason to be slow.

Readline settings depend on what you're already used to. If you're comfortable with vi key bindings, then being in normal mode, navigating with `w`/`b`, deleting a word with `dw`, deleting up to a quote with `dt"`, etc., are all done with muscle memory, and should be much faster than learning the equivalent Emacs bindings, pressing unintuitive key chords, or opening the command in an editor. I don't like opening an editor since it's an interruption, and it hides the output of the previous command.

I wish I could have the full power of Vim in my shells. For example, I miss the delete between characters binding. `di"` or `di'` are great for modifying argument values.