Filtering ZSH history by command

Question

I was told that in ZSH you could do something like command and then when you hit up it would filter the history based on the given command. But when I try this it just cycles the history like bash does. Is this disabled by default?

Answer 1

Hit Ctrl+R, type some letters, it will find the previous command with these letters, keep hitting Ctrl+R to continue through the previous findings.
Works in bash, zsh (and other shells i suppose).

What i personally like to have is: type some letters, press Up, the previous commands starting with the same letters appear. Very powerful, i love it.
You have to bind the keys you want to history-beginning-search-backward and history-beginning-search-forward.

In case it's not enough for you, zsh has a lot of options, try to look in Zsh Line Editor and tell us.
For bash, less powerful but more common, Bash commands for history.

Answer 2

Use exclamation point:

> !<starts-with this string>

You can arrow up/down through all commands that started with that. I use "!v" all the time to get my previous command for opening a file with Vim.

You can also use a question mark to search beyond matching the beginning of the string,

> !?status

Can find "git status".

Answer 3

Use percol to dynamically search and navigate through your history with Ctrl-r.

• install percol: sudo pip install percol
• add the zsh-history-search code snippet to your .zshrc file.

After a Ctrl-r, you can see your whole history in the same window. Searching for a keyword (dynamically) narrows that list down. You can use key-bindings (like this emacs like config) to navigate up and down the list and eventually make a selection.

Here is a search for all sudo install commands available in history with sudo make install selected.

Enter issues the selected command.

Answer 4

We can also use fzf to fuzzy search the command history interactively.

Here is how to install:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf
~/.fzf/install

Say yes to all its configs. After that, restart your zsh shell, and press Ctrl-R, whoa, interactive command history search pops up. Enjoy!