How to reverse-i-search back and forth?

Question

I use reverse-i-search often, and that's cool. Sometime though when pressing CTRL+r multiple times, I pass the command I am actually looking for. Because CTRL+r searches backward in history, from newest to oldest, I have to:

cancel,
search again and
stop exactly at the command, without passing it.

While in reverse-i-search prompt, is it possible to search forward, i.e. from where I stand to newest. I naively tried CTRL+Shift+r, no luck. I heard about CTRL+g but this is not what I am expecting here. Anyone has an idea?

It is more a superuser question I supposed: http://superuser.com/questions/472846/how-to-reverse-i-search-back-and-forth — m-ric, Sep 11 '12 at 15:53
@m-ric you say it is more a superuser question. Here it has 88 up-votes. At superuser it has 6 up-votes. — guettli, Jun 22 '18 at 13:05
@valk no, on Ubuntu 20.04 inside WSL2 `Ctrl+Shift+R` does exactly the same thing as `Ctrl+R`. — pabouk - Ukraine stay strong, Jun 24 '21 at 08:53

score 99 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 24 '22 at 22:12

99

There is a similar question here:

Control-r reverse-i-search in Bash: how do you "reset" the search in Cygwin?

Found another similar question on Super User:

(reverse-i-search) in Bash

Apparently, both mention Ctrl+s, which may do the trick.

edited Dec 24 '22 at 22:12

starball

20,030
7
43
238

answered Mar 06 '13 at 09:35

gdupont

1,660
18
27

1

ctrl-s - standard emacs. – Mike Makuch Sep 26 '13 at 04:56
55

Important: To make `^-S` work, add `stty -ixon` to your bash profile (`~/.bashrc` on Linux, `~/.bash_profile` on OSX). Also note that reversing direction by pressing the respective other keyboard shortcut is initially a _no-op_ - all that changes is the display's prefix (`reverse-i-search` vs. `i-search`). Thus, to actually *take 1 step* in the other direction, press the keyboard shortcut *twice*. – mklement0 Jan 27 '14 at 22:51
3

What does no-op mean? What does `stty -ixon` do exactly? – zyxue Feb 29 '16 at 19:40
1

@zyxue noop means "no operation." It means that the shortcut is mapped to "do nothing." See [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP). Without setting `-ixon`, ctrl-s tells the terminal to stop updating meaning you to have to push ctrl-q to resume normal operation. By setting `-ixon` you disable that behavior, which maps ctrl-s to `i-search`. – blockloop Jan 13 '17 at 02:45
2

@gdupont it looks like i-search is part of readline. The source is here: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/readline.git/tree/isearch.c?h=devel – Max Heiber Feb 17 '17 at 02:40

score 62 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 30 '18 at 08:50

CTRL + S

...solved it for me AFTER using...

stty -ixon

If CTRL+S doesn't work for you is because according to Vincenzo Pii's accepted answer in another related thread:

The problem is that this binding, in many terminals, is used by default to send the pause transmission code (XOF).

As in man stty:
[-]ixon
    enable XON/XOFF flow control
So, if you have this option enabled on your terminal (the output of stty -a contains ixon withouth the - sign in front), you cannot use CTRL+S in the context of reverse-i-search.

To disable it, use the following command:
stty -ixon
And CTRL+S will give you a (i-search) (non reverse).

In my case `-ixon` is disabled but for some reason ^S symbols is still installed literally. I'm on `lxterminal`. — xji, Apr 02 '18 at 12:56

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 30 '18 at 08:51

7

Try delete, magically worked.

Others point to CTRL+s, but it doesn't work for me.

edited Mar 30 '18 at 08:51

simhumileco

31,877
16
137
115

answered Jan 27 '14 at 22:04

advisor21

79
1
1

9

Try running `stty -ixon` first. If that helps, add it to your bash profile. – mklement0 Jan 27 '14 at 22:47
6

It works, but could you please explain what does `stty -ixon` do exactly? – zyxue Feb 29 '16 at 18:32
3

delete didn't do anything for me – elig Sep 19 '18 at 02:44
I couldn't get `stty -ixon` to work, but hitting the `delete` key while doing a `bck-i-search` worked. It goes to the previous search result. Thank you @advisor21! – Patrick Motard Oct 07 '22 at 15:52

How to reverse-i-search back and forth?

3 Answers3