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Myrmornis | karma 1804 | avg karma 1.18 · 2016-09-13 05:55:40+00:00

Agreed, but even nicer than control-r are the readline functions `history-search-backward` and `history-search-forward`.

Personally I bind them to up/down which on OS X at least involves:

  # Put this in some file like ~/.readline-bindings
  "\e[A": history-search-backward
  "\e[B": history-search-forward

  # And this in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
  bind -f ~/.readline-bindings

That way if you haven't typed any input it behaves like normal up (previous command), but if you've typed some characters it only retrieves matching commands.

http://codeinthehole.com/writing/the-most-important-command-...

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lolive | karma 1015 | avg karma 1.35 · 2016-09-13 08:52:43+00:00

Mapping these to Up/Down arrows (instead of PgUp-PdDn) is the best idea EVER !!!

devnonymous | karma 2702 | avg karma 3.59 · 2016-09-13 16:02:57

Just curious since I don't use a mac, doesn't writing the mappings to .inputrc work? IIRC, putting your readline bindings there makes it available for all readline enabled prompts, not just bash ie: Python, pgsql, mysql,.. Etc

Myrmornis | karma 1804 | avg karma 1.18 · 2016-09-13 19:04:23+00:00

Yes I think that's a better approach, thanks. I don't know why I started using `bind` in my shell config.

musicmatze | karma 127 | avg karma 2.7 · 2016-09-18 08:04:09

Is there a way to make this work with `set -o vi`? So I can use j/k to browse the history this way?