Linux Journal tip

[Paul Dickson]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:40:38 +0000, 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."
> 

There's Ctrl-O, which acts like you pressed enter, but after the command
completes, the very next command line pops up for pressing enter (or
ctrl-o again or editing).  This makes recycling a series of command lines
over and over as easy as just pressing Ctrl-O.

	-Paul