A Useful Thing in Bash
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The single most useful thing in bash
Create ~/.inputrc and fill it with this:
"\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward
This allows you to search through your history using the up and down arrows … i.e. type " cd " and press the up arrow and you'll search through everything in your history that starts with "cd".
It's a little bit like ctrl-r (mentioned in many of the comments below), but anchored to the start of the line, and the arrow keys allow you to scroll back and forth between matches.
I use it when I'm looking to (for instance) call up the last ping I did (hit p, up arrow, return), whereas I use ctrl-r more like search, when I'm trying to find a command based on an argument or option that I used.
Both useful.
Other options that I find useful to add:
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
This alters the default behavior of the completion functions. If set to ‘on’, words which have more than one possible completion cause the matches to be listed immediately instead of ringing the bell. The default value is ‘off’.
set completion-ignore-case on
If set to ‘on’, Readline performs filename matching and completion in a case-insensitive fashion. The default value is ‘off’.
(asmiah points out below, this is all actually Readline functionality. The title should be "Readline is the single most useful thing in everything" ;)
Add your response
November 19, 2012 19:18
1646
I guess I'm crazy enough to use fish that contains this feature by default ;-).
over 1 year ago ·
November 23, 2012 18:09
1790
it's the pro version of "history | grep putyourcommandhere" :D thank you!
over 1 year ago ·
November 23, 2012 18:56
1794
December 06, 2012 02:27
2279
Also consider "set -o vi", for a set of vi powertools at the command line. Search history with regexes, traverse lines with vi keybindings, etc.
over 1 year ago ·
December 12, 2012 19:17
2431
Using the arrow keys is almost as bad as using a mouse, I try to leave the homerow as little as possible. So I would just type 'cd /' then hit ctrl-r repeatedly until I find the command I want. Or more likely the first few characters of the directory I want to cd into and hit ctrl-r a few times until I have the command I want.
over 1 year ago ·
December 14, 2012 13:56
2498
ALSO: This makes your bash complete case INsensitive... Just because nobody mentioned it explicitly(except the command itself ;).
And CTRL-R is not even close to what this does, honestly... try first.
over 1 year ago ·
December 14, 2012 13:59
2499
@matleclaire this is not even close to CTRL-R.
What about case insensitive completion? At least on my machine CTRL-R is not helping there. Also, multiple CTRL-R are also not behaving like this.
over 1 year ago ·
December 19, 2012 22:18
2670
This is better than ctrl + r and can be used together with zsh. win + win.
over 1 year ago ·
December 24, 2012 09:29
2748
If you want to apply this globally put it in /etc/inputrc. On debian/ubuntu the file is already present, just un-comment the line with '"\e[5~": history-search-backward' etc and check the other nice options!
over 1 year ago ·
January 25, 2013 14:46
3451
This is awesome!
Solved my long lasting confusion. I know ctrl+r but seems I can not search forward if I accidentally missed the command line I'm searching for. The arrow keys are more friendly.
over 1 year ago ·
February 17, 2013 23:57
4139
Nice. I've been using this feature since I've switched to ZSH + Oh-my-zsh, where it comes enabled by default.
over 1 year ago ·
March 09, 2013 21:17
4720
Huh! On bash it is same as using PageUp and PageDown. Type cd / and do PageUp.
over 1 year ago ·
March 26, 2013 09:49
5112
@moiseevigor I was going to say, on Ubuntu something similar already seems to be in place! How does this differ?
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 18:35
5666
Personally I find this annoying. At times I'll (for whatever reason) already have something typed into the prompt, and I realize I need a command from recent history, so I press up a few times. In this case I'd first have to press ctrl+a and ctrl+k to kill what I've already typed, or things would get very strange.
It's a cool feature, but it does come down to personal preference, and personally, ctrl+r is more than good enough.
It might be worth mentioning though that I use ZSH and oh-my-zsh.
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 19:16
5671
@sheerun or even better: OhMyZsh! https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 19:28
5673
https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
+
zsh history-substring-search plugin
= awesomeness in ZSH
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 19:37
5674
@ipetepete Actually I prefer antigen, and enhancing zsh by myself :)
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 19:51
5676
@glitchmr I use fish as well. I feel that lots of people using zsh would love fish if they tried it.
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 20:14
5678
This actually has nothing to do with bash and has more to do with readline. So long as your shell supports readline these features should be available.
http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 20:40
5680
Or just use :
alias hs="history | grep"
Save it to your .bashrc file to make it permanent.
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 21:38
5686
you should really check out fish ( http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/ )
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 23:05
5690
I prefer "\ep" for history-search-backward and "\en" history-search-forward. In this way, C-p retrieves the previous command from history and M-p retrieves the previous matching command from history. It makes more sense to me.
over 1 year ago ·
April 17, 2013 23:19
5691
I used to use fish, but switched to zsh (with oh-my-zsh). The backwards compatibility does wind up making life easier and there aren't many fish features I miss.
over 1 year ago ·
April 18, 2013 04:52
5700
Step 1: Install https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
Step 2: Edit your ~/.zshrc , find the "plugins" line, and add "history-substring-search" to the end. Here's mine:
$ grep "plugins=" ~/.zshrc plugins=(git … history-substring-search)
over 1 year ago ·
April 18, 2013 09:37
5709
Yeah. Start using zsh and then make your dotfiles better.
over 1 year ago ·
April 18, 2013 10:03
5711
The problem with these configuration is it prints ;5D and ;5C when CTRL+<Left> and CTRL+<Right> are pressed instead of moving cursor to one word left and right.
over 1 year ago ·
April 18, 2013 13:06
5717
hey, nice tip, but the cursor keeps its position at the beginng, how can I set to make the cursor locate at the end of the command when moving backwd/fwd? thanks
over 1 year ago ·
April 19, 2013 06:58
5749
I already have the show-all-if-ambiguous and completion-ignore-case enabled in my input.rc and ctrl+r takes benefit of that.
One thing ctrl+r does differently is that you can search in the middle of your command (and not just the beginning), which I find more useful.
For example, I have way too many commands that start with cd, but if I use ctrl+r and type in the unique part of the filepath that I want, it jumps straight to the command I'm looking for.
over 1 year ago ·
April 20, 2013 12:40
5777
The first two lines are actually useful. But the last two things will get very annoying very fast, specially if you're used to working with a Unix-type CLI often.
over 1 year ago ·
April 21, 2013 16:39
5797
If you want CTRL+<right> and CTRL+<left> to continue working, you'll need these changes as well:
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
over 1 year ago ·
May 28, 2013 13:32
6714
This was very very util ! thanks!! :D
I'm using this "bash shortcut" in my Linode, it's excellent! Thanks again
over 1 year ago ·
August 07, 2013 02:58
8401
I can understand people's love for zsh, but it doesn't help people who use Bash and just want to improve it.
two cents
over 1 year ago ·
October 21, 2013 06:21
10191
works on bash
For csh use
bindkey -k up history-search-backward
bindkey -k down history-search-forward
over 1 year ago ·
October 24, 2013 19:23
10301
Thanks for the tip, but I like my ups and downs the way they are. Never used ctl+r but will now!
over 1 year ago ·
November 12, 2013 17:29
10806
March 27, 2014 14:29
13736
Its a good tip, but yeah - zsh has this and soooo much more.
over 1 year ago ·
June 26, 2014 17:05
15345
you can get even more power with zsh zle http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Zsh-Line-Editor.html
or simply fc
over 1 year ago ·
July 15, 2014 04:40
15662
Perhaps you could consider BASH history suggest box https://github.com/dvorka/hstr that greatly simplifies navigation through the history and its management.
over 1 year ago ·
August 23, 2014 13:38
16307
January 09, 2015 22:05
18012
This is much better than Ctrl-R. Thank you very much..
over 1 year ago ·
February 04, 2015 18:45
18239
Ctrl+R is broken for me... never worked quite right :( Didn't correctly delete previous prompt when I was scrolling through history and other various glitches.
over 1 year ago ·
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