Difference between revisions of "Virgo/Committers/Bash"

Latest revision as of 10:25, 13 June 2011

Contextual Bash History simply means that instead of having to type the up key a million times to find what you want or using the ! syntax for the last command starting with a string, you can get the best of both worlds. You can type a short string and then use up and down keys to search through anything in your history that meets that requirement.

To enable this

1. Add the following lines to your ~/.bash_profile file. This will optimize your history for this kind of behavior.

export HISTCONTROL=erasedups
export HISTSIZE=10000
shopt -s histappend

1. Put the following into a file called ~/.inputrc.

# do not make noise
set bell-style none

# By default up/down are bound to previous-history
# and next-history respectively. The following does the
# same but gives the extra functionality where if you
# type any text (or more accurately, if there is any text
# between the start of the line and the cursor),
# the subset of the history starting with that text
# is searched (like 4dos for e.g.).
# Note to get rid of a line just Ctrl-C
"\e[B": history-search-forward
"\e[A": history-search-backward

$if Bash
  # F10 toggles mc on and off
  # Note Ctrl-o toggles panes on and off in mc
  "\e[21~": "mc\C-M"

  #do history expansion when space entered
  Space: magic-space
$endif

# Include system wide settings which are ignored
# by default if one has their own .inputrc
$include /etc/inputrc

1. Run source ~/.bash_profile.
2. You're off! For a quick example, type ant and use up and down. You should see all of your old ant commands role by.