Question about shell commands

[Daniel Schneider]

Hi all,
I have a very little question about shell commanding:
I found, that I can use some commands from the command history by using esc+k. Now I'm searching for a command, and then I have to type very often k,k,k,k... . So what I'm looking for is, to give the first two or three digits from the command, and then to find it faster. How can I do that?
And how can I increase the history length?

Thank you for your reply!

Daniel :-)

[Addie Wevers]

Hi Daniel,
Esc+k is very usefull. After this you can use vi-commands to search in your command history.
So, type '/' and a part of the command you are looking for, and press enter. When you need the next command, just type 'n' (next).
The history can be increased by setting the variable HISTSIZE in your .profile. For example, 'export HISTSIZE=5000'.

[Rainer_1 · Accepted solution]

searching a command can be done with the / character

[ESC]K
/

increase history with setting the variable HISTZISE ie:

HISTSIZE=500 ; export HISTSIZE

insert this into /etc/profile or $HOME/.profile
(the default for HISTSIZE is 128)

For more information see

man sh-posix

[Tommy Palo]

Almost everything said here.
You can also use [ESC]z and /.
If you know your 'vi' you also know that when typing 'n', a ? (question mark) reverses the search direction. Good if you passed by the command you were looking for.

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Daniel,

Nearly everything has been said before but another useful key to know is 'N'

If after having searched for a command containing a string, typed a few times 'n' for the preceeding occurence, typing 'N' will back to the previous one. Useful if you're typing too fast like most of us ;-)

Dan

[Stefan Schulz]

There is also another funktion (at least in ksh). You can use r with the beginning of the command you want. For example your last commands look like:

>lpstat -t
>cd somewhere
>vi something
>man command

After this you can recall the lpstat command with:

>r lps

But you have to use the beginning of the command (as far as i know).

Hope this helps also.

Regards

Stefan

[Daniel Schneider]

Thank you all.
Your comments are very helpful.

Best regards
Daniel :-)