CTRL + W usually deletes everything until the previous whitespace, so it would delete the whole '/var/log/nginx/' string in OP's example. Alt + backspace usually deletes until it encounters a non-alphanumeric character.

Be careful working CTRL + W into muscle memory though, I've lost count of how many browser tabs I've closed by accident...

Depends on the shell - bash on my Ubuntu deletes entire '/var/log/nginx/', while after switching to sh it deletes only nginx

In my terminal it's the exact opposite – Alt-Backspace deletes to the previous space, whereas Ctrl-W deletes to the last non-alphanumeric (such as /). I'm using fish shell in an Alacritty terminal.

Yeah, pressing Ctrl-W accidentially is a pain sometimes ... but Ctrl-Shift-T in Firefox is a godsend.

Set $WORDCHARS accordingly. In your case, remove / from $WORDCHARS.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/726014

'man readline' contains all the useful key combinations.

I've installed "More Better Ctrl-W" for Chromium, and mapped Ctrl-W to do nothing, and Ctrl-D to close the current tab

> Be careful working CTRL + W into muscle memory though, I've lost count of how many browser tabs I've closed by accident...

This hurts.

Also, for the shell, if you do C+w, you can "paste" it back using C+y. Assuming you have not removed that configuration.

Ctrl-Shift-T usually brings that tab right back at least

...which is why I recently went to about:keyboard and removed that hotkey. I love that page.

That, and Ctrl-N. No more forest of blank browser windows when using a terminal emulator in a web page!

(Firefox only)