Matlab-like command history retrieval in unix command line

Question

In Matlab, there is a very nice feature that I like. Suppose I typed the command very-long-command and then a few several commands afterwards. Then later if I need the long command again, I just type very and press the up arrow key, my long command appears. It finds the last command that starts with very. I couldn't do the same in unix command line, when I try to do it, it disregards whatever I typed, and goes back to the last commands in chronological order. Is there a way to do it?

Answer 1

In bash, hitting ctrl-r will let you do a history search:

$ echo 'something very long'
something very long
$ # blah
$ # many commands later...
(reverse-i-search)`ec': echo 'something very long'

In the above snippet, I hit ctrl-r on the next line after # many commands later..., and then typed ec which brought me back to the echo command. At that point hitting Enter will execute the command.

Answer 2

You can do the same thing with "!". For example:

 $ echo "Hello"
 Hello
 $ !echo
 echo "Hello"
 Hello

However, it is generally a bad idea to do this sort of thing (what if the last command did something destructive?). If you expet you will reuse something, then I suggest you create a shell script and save it away somewhere (whenever I plan to reuse something, I create a script in ~/.local/bin).

Answer 3

In bash this functionality is provided by the commands history-search-forward and history-search-backward, which by default are not bound to any keys (see here). If you run

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

it will make up-arrow and down-arrow search backward and forward through the history for the string of characters between the start of the current line and the point. See also this related Stack Overflow question.