Skip to main content

Raymii.org Raymii.org Logo

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Home | About | All pages | Cluster Status | RSS Feed

Bash Incremental History Search / Autocomplete

Published: 26-06-2013 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article


❗ This post is over ten years old. It may no longer be up to date. Opinions may have changed.

This little snippet for your .bashrc or your .inputrc changes the Up/Down arrow behavior to autocomplete what is already typed instead of just go back in history.

Recently I removed all Google Ads from this site due to their invasive tracking, as well as Google Analytics. Please, if you found this content useful, consider a small donation using any of the options below:

I'm developing an open source monitoring app called Leaf Node Monitoring, for windows, linux & android. Go check it out!

Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs.

You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $100 credit for 60 days.

Normally when you press Up in Bash you get the previous command. With these lines that is changed. If you typed vim filename, then top and then again vim and pres up, it will autocomplete to vim filename instead of go back to top.

Either in your .bashrc:

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

Or in your .inputrc:

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
Tags: autocomplete , bash , bashrc , inputrc , shell , snippets