Unable to forward search Bash history similarly as with CTRL-r

Question

I am trying to search my bash history similarly as with CTRL-r, but to forward direction.

It has been a pain for me, when I just hit once too often CTRL-r, to find the previous command again.

How can you forward search your Bash history similarly as in reverse searching?

Burbage

Anyone have a solution for Git Bash in Windows? – Hagy

@GarretWilson: The accepted answer works for me in Git Bash (setting stty -ixon). – Tallou

Thanks for mentioning this, @Tallou . I just now tried it again, and it does seem to work. Maybe the first time I tried it I had put something in the wrong state by using Ctrl+S before trying the command, or by some other key combination, or who knows what. – Hagy

Answer 1

You can search forward as well. From the bash info manual, "8.2.5 Searching for Commands in the History":

To search backward in the history for a particular string, type C-r. Typing C-s searches forward through the history.

The problem with Ctrl-S however is that sometimes collides with XON/XOFF flow control (in Konsole for instance). The searching is a readline feature however, and you should be able to bind it to some other key. Update: Simpler and better is just to disable XON/XOFF by running

stty -ixon

Odilia

It seems to collide with XON/XOFF all the time for me, since I cannot get Ctrl-S working. How can you bind the search to other key? – Icono

This is brilliant, but I add stty -ixon to my .profile and it doesn't seem to work for new tabs. Any ideas on how to make this work? I'd love XON/XOFF to be disabled by default. – Gyimah

In case anyone else has the same issue I did - if you add this to .profile it doesn't take effect. It's only when you add it to the .bash_profile that the magic happens! Thanks for a great tip - this had been driving me mad for years. – Gyimah

@JohnGallagher Important to note is that .bash_profile and .profile are only sourced for log-in shells. I would put this in .bashrc (which I source from .profile). – Pourpoint

[[ $- == *i* ]] && stty -ixon can be used to avoid the problem described here – Cannice

In case you're using PuTTY and can't/don't want to maintain .bash_profile on every machine you connect to, this answer on superuser works a treat. – Giltzow

Just to be sure. Does anyone have a scenario where you would need flow control? – Borax

@Borax If you communicate with some several decades old museum computer hardware like a terminal screen or printer, then using xon/xoff might be useful. For everything else, you want it disabled. – Odilia

Still doesn't work for me on lxterminal even after running stty -ixon? – Mcglothlin

I had to type two times C-s to move forward could it be done with single C-s? – Anchovy

Running stty ixon is not fixing the problem for me in zsh; anyone have any ideas? – Manolo

Answering my own comment: for zsh, per man zshle, adding the two lines bindkey '^r' history-incremental-search-backward and bindkey '^s' history-incremental-search-forward to ~/.zshrc worked (and of course running source ~/.zshrc after editing to source changes). It does take 2 invocations of Ctrl+S to start going forward again after going backwards with Ctrl+R. – Manolo

I tried to upvote, but it said I had already upvoted 🤦‍♂️ I'll write it on by laptop with permanent marker this time ... – Coagulate

Answer 2

The best trick IMHO is enabling with pgup and pgdown. just put that in your ~/.inputrc

"\e[5~": history-search-forward
"\e[6~": history-search-backward

logout/login, type the first letters and then pgup or pgdown to search throughout history

ctrl-R search all lines containing words, whereas history-search-forward search lines beginning with words

Kermis

You can also uncomment these 2 lines in /etc/inputrc (e.g. in Ubuntu). – Squarely

I prefer to bind this to up and down arrow: "\e[A": history-search-backward and "\e[B": history-search-forward – Zipangu

What if this has no effect in bash? – Amontillado

@Sören This works in bash (tested version 4.4.20). Please ensure you put this in either ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc. This will not work if placed in any of the bashrc files because it's not a command, it's a configuration option. – Tatro

Answer 3

You may want to try https://github.com/dvorka/hstr which allows for "suggest box style" filtering of Bash history with (optional) metrics based ordering i.e. it is much more efficient and faster in both forward and backward directions:

It can be easily bound to Ctrl-r and/or Ctrl-s

Menam

I'm in love. Quick instructions to install on Ubuntu: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ultradvorka/ppa; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install hh; hh --show-configuration >> ~/.bashrc; – Outroar

Answer 4

I usually press ESC in terminal, and then the >. It resets at least and then you could try press less too often CTRL+R.

Amianthus

s/click/press/ Also, you need to press escape twice (first time to escape from the backwards search). – Piscary

This is such underrated advice if one has set HISTSIZE and the like to -1..... – Neurath

Answer 5

Another solution is to use:

history | grep <searched expression>

Nonconductor

Answer 6

As many have experienced, ctrl+s freezes (and ctrl+q unfreezes) the terminal because of software flow control (XON/XOFF flow control) and you can disable it as mentioned in the accepted answer.

Although I can't say I've really intentionally used the feature, I do want the option to be able to pause a fast moving stream of terminal text, so I didn't want to completely disable it.

So instead of turning it off, I rebound the xoff function by placing the following in my .bashrc

stty stop '^P'

Which binds xoff to ctrl+p (and ctrl+q still unfreezes). I used "p" for "pause" and this does obscure the bash previous command function previous-history. Personally I always use the up arrow key for that so it doesn't matter to me, but you could choose a different key.

This automatically frees up ctrl+s for forward-search-history

Socage

Answer 7

For KDE's terminal app (Konsole), you can disable flow control with XON/XOFF from settings according to THIS answer:

"in Konsole you can disable this feature, by going to Settings -> Configure Profile -> Choose current profile -> Edit Profile -> Advanced Tab and disable 'Enable flow control using Ctrl+S and Ctrl+Q'"

Karlkarla