bash – Search for a previous command with the prefix I just typed – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/18
[WayBack] bash – Search for a previous command with the prefix I just typed – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange answered by [WayBack] John1024:
What you are looking for is
Ctrl-R.Type
Ctrl-Rand then type part of the command you want. Bash will display the first matching command. Keep typingCtrlRand bash will cycle through previous matching commands.To search backwards in the history, type
Ctrl-Sinstead. (IfCtrl-Sdoesn’t work that way for you, that likely means that you need to disable XON/XOFF flow control: to do that, runstty -ixon.)This is documented under “Searching” in
man bash.
Comment by [WayBack] HongboZhu:
Ctrl-Qto quit the frozen state, if you already hitCtrl-Swithout turning off flow control first and got your terminal frozen.
A far more elaborate answer with many other tips is from [WayBack] Peter Cordes:
Besides ^r / ^s history i-search:
alt. inserts the last “word” of the previous command at the cursor. Repeat it to get the last word from older commands. (But note that a trailing
&counts as the last word for background commands).This is super handy for
mkdir foo,cdalt-dot. Even faster than up-arrow, ^a, alt-d (delete forward word),cd.To get the 2nd-to-last word, use
esc-2alt+.(i.e. use an emacs-style numeric argument toalt+.. Negative counts in from the end, positive counts forward from the start.) But this is usually more trouble than it’s worth; at some point it’s faster to reach for the mouse and copy/paste, or up-arrow and ^w / ^y part of it (see below).
If your terminal is set up nicely/properly, ctrl-left and ctrl-right will go backward/forward by words. If not, hopefully at least alt-b and alt-f will do the same thing.
ctrl-/ is an undo. You can use auto-repeat for deleting words much more efficiently if you can undo when you overshoot by a bit.
More powerful mixing/matching of commands comes from using the kill-ring, which works just like in Emacs. ctrl-y to paste the last ctrl-w / ctrl-u / ctrl-backspace / alt-d. alt-y to cycle through older killed text.
Multiple ctrl-w or whatever in a row make on kill-ring entry. Use left and right arrow or something to break up the entry if you want to remove two things and only paste one later.
Combining all of these together, you can
- start typing a command
- ctrl-r to go back to an old command and grab part of it with control-w or similar.
- esc-r or
alt+rto restore it to how it was before you deleted part of it.- alt-
>to go to the end of history (i.e. down-arrow all the way), to get back to the command you were in the middle of.
Other interactive-use tips:
Enable
shopt -s globstar, so you can do**/*.c(recursive including the current dir). Sometimes handy for interactive use, but usuallyfind -name '*.c' -exec foo {} +is better.If you write bash scripts, you’ll find it handy to have
shopt -s extglobenabled in your interactive shells, too. You will sometimes find a use for stuff like*.!(c|h)to match files that don’t end with .c or .h.Find aliases you like for
ls -l,less, and anything else you do a lot. (cp -i,mv -i, andrm -Iare nice. Don’t get in the habit of depending on them to do a selective rm. GNU rm’s -I asks once for all the args.)I like
alias m=less(m for “more”). I havelessset up with , and . bound to previous / next file (lesskey). The default is a multi-keypress sequence that can’t be used with autorepeat.
I like to do everything inside GNU screen. I find it easier to keep track of numbered screen-windows than a boatload of tabs in Konsole (or any other terminal emulator I’ve tried). If you don’t already know
screen, learn tmux because it’s newer and less crufty.To get something like the functionality of opening a new shell with the same cwd as another shell, I use a custom hook for cd/pushd/popd that lets me do
cds 8to cd to whatever dir my shell in screen window 8 is using. This works even for shells outside of the screen session, as long as there’s only one screen session.
I searched for the above because of the below shortcuts video: recommended watching!
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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