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.
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2According to 'man zshzle', history-incremental-search-backward is not bound in Vi modes (vicmd, viins) by default.– paulJul 27, 2012 at 13:45
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2 Answers
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.
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3Thanks, particularly for
zshzle. That is quite informative and useful.– Hank GayJul 27, 2012 at 15:27 -
1I love you. Seriously. After upgrading to OSX El Capitan reverse search was gone and I missed it more than everything else in my daily workflow. Oct 17, 2015 at 18:09
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esc/seems like the right answer however, not so much just rebinding one emacs mode keybinding into vi mode.– dlamblinSep 27, 2022 at 16:54
This is an ancient question, but the only (and accepted) answer basically tells one how to transplant the “emacs-like” history-incremental-search-backward to vi mode. Whilst this is perfectly doable and may be the right solution for you, it’s a little strange that no one has mentioned the “vi way” of searching history.
vi mode in zsh supports searching history using the standard vi/vim keys: / and ?, both available in command mode. (Hit <Esc> to switch from insert to command mode, just like in vi or vim.)
Their sense is reversed, though: Since you usually want to search your shell’s history in reverse, / does a reverse search whereas ? does a forward search.
Once the first hit is displayed, you can (just like in vi/vim) use n to continue finding more hits in the same direction, or N to reverse the direction of the search.
The relevant default keybindings in the vicmd keymap are:
"/" vi-history-search-backward
"?" vi-history-search-forward
"n" vi-repeat-search
"N" vi-rev-repeat-search
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7It's also good to use
"^P" history-beginning-search-backwardand"^N" history-beginning-search-forwardfor vim-like autocompletion (you start typing, then pressctrl+porctrl+n).– cprnOct 31, 2016 at 20:45 -
For me,
?brings upbck-i-search, which is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.– geowa4Dec 2, 2016 at 1:40 -
@wjv the advantage of history-incremental-search-backward is that is supports glob patterns. The default
/or `?' doesnt: coderwall.com/p/-jvcag/zsh-reverse-history-search-with-regex Apr 15, 2018 at 16:12 -
@alpha_989 The blog post you reference is incorrect. It may be that the author has some zsh “framework” installed that overloads the
^Rkeybinding. The only “regex-like” character supported by bothhistory-search-backwardandhistory-incremental-search-backwardis^, to anchor the search string to the start of the line. The real power ofhistory-incremental-search-backwardis that it does an incremental search, as its name suggests. I can imagine that one might want to bind it in thevicmdkeymap for that reason.– wjvApr 17, 2018 at 6:23 -
@wjv, you are right.. I should have written
history-incremental-pattern-search-backward, nothistory-incremental-search-backward.history-incremental-pattern-search-backwardsmaybe a widget.. but I think it comes installed by default in zsh. It supportsglobpatterns notregexas you correctly pointed out: zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Expansion.html#Glob-Operators. There is indeed a mistake in the post.. Apr 17, 2018 at 15:29