How to automatically clear the terminal before reverse search?

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to run the clear command automatically when I initiate a reverse search with CTRLR.

I am familiar with the precmd function in zsh, but do not know how to limit it to a subset of commands without slowing down the sell. One possible solution would be to add an if condition in precmd for detecting reverse search, although I am not sure what the condition should be for history-incremental-search-backward.

Answer 1

function my-history-incremental-search-backward {
    zle clear-screen
    zle history-incremental-search-backward
}
zle -N my-history-incremental-search-backward
bindkey "^r" my-history-incremental-search-backward

We add a custom incremental search function that first clears the screen (you could also run clear but that looked ugly and then does not redraw the prompt if you control+c out of the search) and then runs the real history-incremental-search-backward.

Alternatively, you could redefine the history-incremental-search-backward widget with:

function history-incremental-search-backward {
  zle clear-screen
  zle .$WIDGET
}
zle -N history-incremental-search-backward

So you don't even need to rebind to all the keys the widget was already bound to.