How to browse through probable results of history in Unix shell using CTRL-R?

Question

Hi,

I have a shell script which I execute frequently in a day with different arguments and/or options each time. What I am looking for is a way to "browse through" different executions of this shell script before selecting a particular one through CtrlR facility. How do I do that?

Ofcourse I can type "history" command and browse through the list manually;however I find CtrlR more convinient. :)

--

Ben

Answer 1

Try typing a common prefix and then pressing ctrl-r repeatedly to browse through different executions.

For example, let's say the command is vim, then:

1. press CTRL-R to begin the reverse-i-search
2. type vim
3. press CTRL-R repeatedly to cycle through previous executions

Answer 2

$ history |grep vi
  711  vi file
  748  vi file
  752  vi file

$ !711