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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 is 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?

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785

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. (More details here.)

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    +1 -- FYI -- you can also search forward as per this StackOverflow answer. – Jordan Arseno Apr 24 '13 at 21:14
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    And use Ctrl+Shift+r for reverse scrolling if you happen to pass over. – wiswit Nov 1 '15 at 13:41
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    @wiswit CTRL+SHIFT+r doesn't work for me. – Maxim Suslov Apr 5 '16 at 7:48
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    @MaximSuslov See this question: stackoverflow.com/questions/791765/… You can add [[ $- == *i* ]] && stty -ixon to your .bashrc and then CTRL+s will work as the reverse of CTRL+r – gla3dr Apr 21 '16 at 17:03
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    @JordanArseno I took "search forward" to mean "search for commands I have not yet typed" – Josh Johnson Jul 28 '16 at 22:10
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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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    Usually I do like this kind of tagging. #trg_bld #open_log – Makesh Jul 31 '15 at 5:50
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    where to add this tag? – Sudip Bhandari Nov 3 '16 at 13:46
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    @SudipBhandari just after your command. # starts a comment. E.g. ls -lah #useful – Andrei Dec 4 '16 at 9:27
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    Unix had hashtags before it was cool :))) – Boris Marinov Oct 11 '19 at 11:44
  • That's more a hack, and .bash_history gets flushed after a while. You'd be more comfortable using bash aliases – Nino Filiu Dec 11 '20 at 13:56
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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    This is also standard on OS X, so you don't need to create ~/.inputrc and add those two lines. – DASKAjA Aug 12 '16 at 14:36
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    As falconepi have written in the comments of this answer, on Ubuntu you just need to uncomment in ~/.inputrc the two lines including history-search-* – Arpad Horvath Aug 16 '16 at 7:11
  • You could also look at this post for more details on this answer: codeinthehole.com/writing/… – Andrei Dec 4 '16 at 9:48
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    This wasn't standard on my macOS (10.13). I've always missed this functionality! – forthrin Mar 30 '18 at 11:02
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    a good thing about this is that you can still use ctrl-p/ctrl-n for regular skimming through history – elig Sep 19 '18 at 2:46
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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:

Example

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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  • This MUST be the accepted answer in my view. Thank you! – Nam G VU Oct 27 '20 at 0:13

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