Linux Journal tip

[Carl Parrish]

Shawn Badger wrote:
> I don't know how many of you receive this weekly newsletter from Linux
> Journal. They have a section called The Brain Trust which had a tip that
> I never heard of for searching the history in a Bash shell. Here is the
> excerpt from the newsletter:
>
>  THE BRAIN TRUST: READERS SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE
>
>    This week we have a contribution from Jim C.:
>
>    "In the technical tips section of your newsletter on 9/5/06, you
> referred to
>    Bret's alias for searching bash history.  Why create an alias when
> bash
>    gives the user the 'reverse-i-search' and 'forward-i-search'
> features?
>
>    At the command line, press Ctrl-R and see this appear on the screen:
>
>                 (reverse-i-search)`':
>
>    "Then press the characters of the search pattern desired, and bash
> will display the nearest line from the current history position matching
> the pattern.  Press Ctrl-R again to search the next nearest line; press
> Ctrl-S to search forward.  Press enter to accept and immediately execute
> the line displayed.  Press a left or right cursor key to accept and edit
> the line. Press Ctrl-C to abandon the search.
>
>    "Much simpler than searching through a possibly long list from a grep
>    search."
>
>    Do you have a useful technical tip to share with our community of
> readers? Send your tips to jgray at ssc.com.  We'll send you a free t-shirt
> for your efforts! Thanks!
>
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>
>   
On FreeBSD tch shell had a *much* easier way to do this. I think it was
just type part of the pattern then the Up arrow key and it searched back
though your history the down arrow key searched forward. I stopped using
tch (and freeBSD) awhile ago but recently tried it on a Linux box (RHEL
4) and it didn't work like I remembered.