In the terminal, I can type Ctrl + R to search for a matching command previously typed in BASH. E.g., if I type Ctrl + R then grep
, it lists my last grep
command, and I can hit enter to use it. This only gives one suggestion though. Is there any way to cycle through other previously typed matching commands?
4 Answers
If I understand the question correctly you should be able to cycle through alternatives by repeatedly hitting Ctrl + R.
E.g.:
- Ctrl + R
grep
- Ctrl + R
- Ctrl + R ...
That searches backwards through your history. To search forward instead, use Ctrl + S, but you may need to have set: stty -ixon
(either by .bash_profile
or manually) prior to that to disable the XON/XOFF feature which takes over Ctrl + S. If it happens anyway, use Ctrl + Q to re-enable screen output (More details here.)
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17And use Ctrl+Shift+r for reverse scrolling if you happen to pass over.– wiswitNov 1, 2015 at 13:41
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16@MaximSuslov See this question: stackoverflow.com/questions/791765/… You can add
[[ $- == *i* ]] && stty -ixon
to your .bashrc and thenCTRL+s
will work as the reverse ofCTRL+r
– gla3drApr 21, 2016 at 17:03 -
16@JordanArseno I took "search forward" to mean "search for commands I have not yet typed" Jul 28, 2016 at 22:10
If you feel the command will be used frequently, you could add a tag
command #useful
Then
Ctrl + R #useful
This works because #
is a comment delimiter, i.e. everything that comes after the symbol is not interpreted as a command. However, it will be recorded in the history and is thus searchable.
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8@SudipBhandari just after your command. # starts a comment. E.g. ls -lah #useful– AndreiDec 4, 2016 at 9:27
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5That's more a hack, and
.bash_history
gets flushed after a while. You'd be more comfortable using bash aliases Dec 11, 2020 at 13:56
You can also set up the up and down arrows to do a slightly different search by adding these lines to ~/.inputrc:
"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
Instead of searching for a substring anywhere in the command (like Ctrl-r) it will search for a command starting with the text to the left of the cursor. For example, if I run these commands:
$ ls bart
$ ls fools
then type ls
and press Up twice, it will show ls bart
and the cursor in the same place. Compare with Ctrl-r, where it would find the ls
twice in the last line, so you'd have to press it once again to find the previous line.
These approaches both have their strengths, and both of them can save a lot of time.
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5This is also standard on OS X, so you don't need to create
~/.inputrc
and add those two lines.– DASKAjAAug 12, 2016 at 14:36 -
1As falconepi have written in the comments of this answer, on Ubuntu you just need to uncomment in
~/.inputrc
the two lines including history-search-* Aug 16, 2016 at 7:11 -
You could also look at this post for more details on this answer: codeinthehole.com/writing/…– AndreiDec 4, 2016 at 9:48
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2This wasn't standard on my macOS (10.13). I've always missed this functionality!– forthrinMar 30, 2018 at 11:02
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1a good thing about this is that you can still use ctrl-p/ctrl-n for regular skimming through history– eligSep 19, 2018 at 2:46
There's a replacement for built-in Ctrl + R called hstr. It allows to search command history matching all search tokens at the same time (among other things), and cycle through result using arrow keys:
Here's is a demo screencast.
It can be installed on a Debian-family OS like:
add-apt-repository ppa:ultradvorka/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install hstr
hstr --show-configuration >> ~/.bashrc
And then use Ctrl + R (after reopening the terminal).
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