In reverse-i-search (Ctrl+R ) ,Any method to switch between similar commands in history

Question

I think an example will be good to understand my question.

...
scp file1 user10@192.168.10.1:/home/user1/linuxfiles/samplecode/important
...
...
scp file1 user10@192.168.10.1:/home/user1/linuxfiles/samplecode/important/tested
...
...

Assume that is the order of commands in history. If I am doing Ctrl+R and type scp it will show the last executed scp command ( ie the line ending with 'tested') .

But I want to locate the scp command ending with 'important'. So is there any way in this reverse-i-search to view all commands starting with scp, to choose the appropriate one?

possible duplicate of [Unable to forward search Bash history similarly as with CTRL-r](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791765/unable-to-forward-search-bash-history-similarly-as-with-ctrl-r) — Léo Léopold Hertz 준영, Jul 15 '15 at 14:05

score 105 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 09 '13 at 09:13

105

Keep pressing Ctrl-R and it will traverse your history.

edited Jan 09 '13 at 09:13

dwalter

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answered Jan 09 '13 at 09:10

jgr

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Thanks, is there a possibility to use Ctrl-R backwards? So if I "ctrl-R" for some time, I see the results, but I would like to go it backwards. "Shift-Ctrl-R" does not work. EDIT: The solution is on SO, see "related". – Timo Sep 10 '14 at 06:08
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Forward search: Ctrl-S. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17760474/reverse-intelligent-search-reverse-i-search-how-to-get-previous-result?rq=1 – Stefan Profanter Aug 26 '15 at 12:25

score 17 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 16 '17 at 20:33

If your search terms are a bit more complicated/ not contiguous, another option is to grep among the history results, e.g.:

history 300 | grep scp | grep important$

This will return a list of commands in your history that match, such as:

3323  scp file1 user10@192.168.10.1:/home/user1/linuxfiles/samplecode/important
3325  scp file1 user10@192.168.10.1:/home/user1/winfiles/samplecode/important

And you can then execute the relevant command with !3325.

I sometimes find this useful when running a lot of similar commands and may have to press Ctrl+R many times to get back to the exact command.

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 16 '17 at 20:33

4

There is great alternative to Ctrl+R

install https://github.com/dvorka/hstr

run it with hh

it shows a list of you all the last commands executed (contents of ./bash_history)

if you start typing the list will be filtered based on what you type

you can use Up/Down arrows to select the desired command and select it with Enter

edited Sep 16 '17 at 20:33

Fabrizio

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answered Jan 19 '17 at 19:46

GiorgosK

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rkachach · Answer 4 · 2020-11-19T08:07:56.337

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I found this great tool mcfly as a replacement to the traditional Ctrl+R and it works really well. Basically you can see ALL the results as you type and you can select the command you are looking for. You can also customize the layout etc. I really recommend it.

https://github.com/cantino/mcfly

edited Nov 19 '20 at 08:07

answered Nov 18 '20 at 14:54

rkachach

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You are using it in mac ? – Arun Nov 19 '20 at 04:43
No, I'm using it on Linux but as far as I know it's supported on Mac as well. – rkachach Nov 19 '20 at 08:04

In reverse-i-search (Ctrl+R ) ,Any method to switch between similar commands in history

4 Answers4