Using Bash History More Efficiently

In bash, the history command will list
the whole recorded history to stdout, so you can easily
pipe that to grep and search for an arbitrary pattern.

To make that more handy, you can define a function, e.g.,
hs (for history search, hg already existed for me ;-) thus:

[15:33 ~]$ function hs () { history|grep "$@" ; } # don't leave out spaces

Then, if you remember some complex command, e.g., involving
find and rm, you can do something like

[15:33 ~]$ hs 'find.*rm'
225 find .. -type f -iname '*swp' |xargs rm -iv {} \;
228 for f in $(find .. -type f -iname '*swp'); do rm -iv $f;done
533 hs 'find.*rm'

Hm, that command 228 was safer than 225. I remember using echo to
pre-test the action. Look for that:

[15:34 ~]$ hs 'find.*echo'
227 for f in $(find .. -type f -iname '*swp'); do echo "'$f'";done
534 hs 'find.*echo'
[15:34 ~]$

It pays to pay attention to detail if re-executing with !nnn
e.g. the find above was below the parent directory at the time. It
won't be what you want to repeat from another place, most likely.

Your history will obviously yield different matches from mine.
BTW, do not arbitrarily remove .swp files!! They are vim's way
of protecting you from yourself ;-) Don't mess with them unless you
know for sure they are no longer needed! I only used that example
because most other commands in my history are trivial to retype.

Onw nice tip is to use Up/Down arrows for forward/backward history search:
# a better up/down arrow key behaviour
bind '"\e[A"':history-search-backward
bind '"\e[B"':history-search-forward

Now start typing a command (say - ssh) and hit Up arrow to search for all ssh commands.

Regarding history search with "!".

On July 8th, 2009 Anonymous
# !tail:p

One could:
$ !tail Alt+^
which would complete the !tail command (in cases when you are not sure).

Set up the following bindings in your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

# Setup and to act like vi for command line history searching
bind -m vi-insert \C-f:history-search-forward
bind -m vi-insert \C-b:history-search-backward

This allows for Control-B to search back through your history for lines matching the partial command you have already typed. Example:
$ history |tail -10
201 svn checkout -r 5267 .
202 svn update -r 5267
203 ls
204 cd build/
205 ls
206 doxygen Doxyfile 2>&1 | tee doxygen_R5267.log
207 grep c-b ~/.bash*
208 more ~/.bashrc
209 hist |last -10
210 history |tail -10
$ doxy
$ doxygen Doxyfile 2>&1 | tee doxygen_R5267.log

One limitation, it is for Vi-keybinding types.