How to reverse-i-search back and forth?

linux bash shell search
m-ric picture m-ric · Sep 11, 2012 · Viewed 86.6k times · Source

I use reverse-i-search often, and that's cool. Sometime though when pressing CTRL+r multiple times, I pass the command I am actually looking for. Because CTRL+r searches backward in history, from newest to oldest, I have to:

  1. cancel,
  2. search again and
  3. stop exactly at the command, without passing it.

While in reverse-i-search prompt, is it possible to search forward, i.e. from where I stand to newest. I naively tried CTRL+Shift+r, no luck. I heard about CTRL+g but this is not what I am expecting here. Anyone has an idea?

Answer

gdupont picture gdupont · Mar 6, 2013

There is a similar question here:

Control-r reverse-i-search in bash: how do you "reset" the search in Cygwin?

Found another similar question on Super User:

(reverse-i-search) in Bash

Apparently, both mention Ctrl+s, which may do the trick.

Hope that helps. I myself am trying to find a piece of code that does the reverse-i-search in order to check how it has been implemented exactly.

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