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Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

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Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#5

Post by Xophmeister »

One thing I wish I knew how to do -- presuming it's possible -- is constraining the reverse/forward history search. Say I know I'm looking for a grep command, I'll do `C-r grep`, but then I want to look through that subset of results for another string (e.g., the pattern, or maybe another part of a pipeline that I half-remember). AFAIK, reverse/forward history search is just an exact string match...and remembering exact strings is hard.

Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#6

Post by senko »

I'm using bash (and thus GNU readline) all day every day at work, and by far the most useful shortcut for me is Ctrl-r (reverse history search).

I also sometimes use Ctrl-a (start of line, if the keyboard doesn't have a convenient Home key) and Ctrl-e (end of line, in lieu of End key).

Btw the post disses Ctrl-s / Ctrl-q for pausing/resuming terminal output, but it can be useful when you're outputting a lot of text (for example tailing a logfile).

Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#7

Post by loloquwowndueo »

Xophmeister wrote: post #5

One thing I wish I knew how to do -- presuming it's possible -- is constraining the reverse/forward history search. Say I know I'm looking for a grep command, I'll do `C-r grep`, but then I want to look through that subset of results for another string (e.g., the pattern, or maybe another part of a pipeline that I half-remember). AFAIK, reverse/forward history search is just an exact string match...and remembering ex…

Fzf can probably help here :

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#8

Post by [deleted] »

Xophmeister wrote: post #5

One thing I wish I knew how to do -- presuming it's possible -- is constraining the reverse/forward history search. Say I know I'm looking for a grep command, I'll do `C-r grep`, but then I want to look through that subset of results for another string (e.g., the pattern, or maybe another part of a pipeline that I half-remember). AFAIK, reverse/forward history search is just an exact string match...and remembering ex…

[deleted]

Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#9

Post by jlokier »

Xophmeister wrote: post #5

One thing I wish I knew how to do -- presuming it's possible -- is constraining the reverse/forward history search. Say I know I'm looking for a grep command, I'll do `C-r grep`, but then I want to look through that subset of results for another string (e.g., the pattern, or maybe another part of a pipeline that I half-remember). AFAIK, reverse/forward history search is just an exact string match...and remembering ex…

I'd use "history | grep ..." at that point, if I can't remember an old command. Possibly "history | grep ... | less" and finish searching inside less.

Re: Keyboard shortcuts for GNU Readline

#10

Post by asicsp »

senko wrote: post #6

I'm using bash (and thus GNU readline) all day every day at work, and by far the most useful shortcut for me is Ctrl-r (reverse history search). I also sometimes use Ctrl-a (start of line, if the keyboard doesn't have a convenient Home key) and Ctrl-e (end of line, in lieu of End key). Btw the post disses Ctrl-s / Ctrl-q for pausing/resuming terminal output, but it can be useful when you're outputting a lot of text (…

>by far the most useful shortcut for me is Ctrl-r

I rarely ever use Ctrl-r since I usually know the starting part of the command I want. So, I type those starting characters and use up/down arrow keys, courtesy these lines in `~/.inputrc`

    "\e[A": history-search-backward
    "\e[B": history-search-forward
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