I use this all the time.  It's incredibly useful.  Shells like ksh have had
some history for a long time, and you could repeat a command with ! and the
beginning of the command, but this is limited because you have to match the
beginning, and it didn't show you what it was going to execute before you did
it.  The ctrl-r in bash is the most useful thing ever.


--- Shawn Badger <sbadger@cskauto.com> 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@ssc.com.  We'll send you a free t-shirt
> for your efforts! Thanks!
> 
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