How do I perform a reverse history search in ZSH's vi-mode?

Question

I use vim for essentially all my editing needs, so I decided to once again try vi-mode for my shell (currently ZSH w/ oh-my-zsh on OS X), but I find myself trying (and failing) to use Ctrl-R constantly. What's the equivalent key-binding? And for future reference, how would I figure this out myself? I'm pretty sure I could use bind -P in bash.

Answer 1

You can run bindkey with no arguments to get a list of existing bindings, eg:

# Enter vi mode
chopper:~> bindkey -v

# Search for history key bindings
chopper:~> bindkey | fgrep history
"^[OA" up-line-or-history
"^[OB" down-line-or-history
"^[[A" up-line-or-history
"^[[B" down-line-or-history

In emacs mode, the binding you want is history-incremental-search-backward, but that is not bound by default in vi mode. To bind Ctrl-R yourself, you can run this command, or add it to your ~/.zshrc:

bindkey "^R" history-incremental-search-backward

The zshzle manpage (man zshzle) has more information on zsh's line editor, bindkey, and emacs/vi modes.