Home / ubuntu / Questions / 60071
Accepted
user784637
Asked: 2011-09-05 21:38:37 +0800 CST

How to forward-search-history with the reverse-i-search command (ctrl+r)?

  • 772

In the readline manual

# man readline

The following describes how to search backward and forward. 

reverse-search-history (C-r)
Search backward starting at the current line and moving `up' through the history as necessary.  This is an incremental search.

forward-search-history (C-s)
Search forward starting at the current line and moving `down' through the  history  as  necessary.   This  is  an  incremental search.

When I hit ctrl+r and type "apt-get", I'm able to do a reverse-search-history by continually tapping ctrl+r. But then I tap ctrl+s and the terminal does not go forwards. Am I doing something incorrect?

Also what key does the Meta prefix "M-" represent?

command-line

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The sequence C-s is taken from the terminal driver, as you can see from 

    stty -a | grep '\^S'

    To free up the sequence for use by readline, set the stop terminal sequence to some other sequence, as for example

    stty stop ^J

    or remove it altogether with

    stty stop undef

    After that C-s would work in the given terminal.

    Set it in ~/.bashrc to make it work in every terminal.

    The M- sequence means the Alt key, as already noted.

    • 16

  2. In addition to assigning a different TTY 'stop' char as suggested above, you can remove it entirely if you don't plan to use it (I tend not to), like this:

    $ stty stop undef

    Then readline can use control-s for forward search and you won't get any strange behavior due to a new stop char being added.

    • 3

  3. forward-search-history (C-s) doesn't work (though it is in the man page).

    'M-' represents the Alt key modifier.

    • 1

  4. To switch forward when using reverse search (with Ctrl-R command) :

    1. Open your .bashrc file :
      sudo gedit ~/.bashrc

    2. add this line (the letter "f" can be replaced with another not yet used by the system)

      bind '"\C-f": forward-search-history'
    3. Close your file and update your .bashrc (or open another terminal) with the command :
      source ~/.bashrc or . ~/.bashrc

    NOW YOU CAN MOVE FORWARD IN THE HISTORY WITH THE SHORTCUT: Ctrl+f

    Working on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

    • 1

  5. Please do not use:

    stty stop ^J

    but 

    stty stop ^P

    or anything else, as ^J makes big problems with ssh. (I do not know why anyway.) After I logged in Enter and backslash were not working. or I had to type:

    stty sane 
export TERM=linux

    before I wanted to type 

    ssh root@192...

    so

    stty stop ^P

    solved both problems at the same time.

    • 0

  6. You can disable XON/XOFF flow control:

    stty -ixon

    in your ~/.profile or similar, then Ctrl+S will be recognized.

    Example

    • 0

  7. Note that I had used

    stty stop ^J
stty -ixoff

    in .bashrc to enable forward search and disable the annoying "Output has been suspended by pressing Ctrl+S. Press Ctrl+Q to resume" message in Konsole when ctrl+s was pressed, but both commands individually broke the Konsole integration in Dolphin (the "F4" shortcut) in the way that I had to do ctrl+c two times to get it to even work, and the automatic "cd" commands where not being injected when graphically navigating.

    So I now prefer:

    stty stop undef
stty -ixon

    It has the same effect, an all seems to work as expected ;)

    • 0