Delete the current notebook cell using the keyboard

Question

Is there another way than pressing Ctrl+. until the whole cell is selected and then pressing Del?

If this is not built in, can I create some sort of a global macro to do this and bind it to a keyboard shortcut?

Answer 1

Referencing Szabolcs's answer, here is the code that must be added to KeyEventTranslations.tr:

Item[KeyEvent["m", Modifiers -> {Control}],
    FrontEndExecute[{
        FrontEnd`SelectionMove[FrontEnd`SelectedNotebook[], All, Cell], 
        FrontEnd`FrontEndToken["Clear"]
    }]],

I chose Ctrl+M at random; change it to whatever you want.

See this before you edit the file.

Answer 2

I usually press the down key until I get out of the cell, then press shift-up to select it.

Here are two buttons that will select or delete the whole cell for you:

select = Button["Select Cell", SelectionMove[SelectedNotebook[], All, Cell]]
delete = Button["Delete Cell", SelectionMove[SelectedNotebook[], All, Cell]; 
 FrontEndTokenExecute["Clear"]]

CreatePalette[Column[{select, delete}]]

I'll leave it to others to set up keyboard shortcuts for these.

I would like to note that these actions don't require the kernel to execute. If you are going to send them to the front end for direct execution (FrontEndExecute), use the versions prefixed by FrontEnd`, i.e. FrontEnd`SelectionMove, etc. You could probably add this version directly to KeyEventTranslation.tr, but I don't have time to test it now.