Re: command history

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, mwild@student.ethz.ch wrote:

> hi everybody
>
> this is my first post, and i'm not sure whether it even belongs here...
>
> is it the shell which handles the command history? if so, here my
> feature request: it would be very convenient, to be able and narrow down
> the search in the command history by typing a few characters, instead of
> having to scroll through the whole thing.
>
> or is it already there, without me knowing how to switch it on?

      There are (at least) two methods of narrowing the history search.
      One is on by default: incremental search with Ctrl-R.

      The other, history-search-backward, is not bound to any key. Type
      one or more characters and bash searches for commands beginning
      with the letters you have already typed.

      I use this in my ~/.inputrc file:

"\e[a": history-search-backward  ## shift+up-arrow
"\e[b": history-search-forward   ## shift+down-arrow

      You may need to adjust the bindings for your terminal.

--
     Chris F.A. Johnson                      <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
     ===================================================================
     Author:
     Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)