How to enable reverse search in zsh?

Question

I recently switched to zsh (finally) and am loving it! So far one thing that I am missing is Ctrl+R to do incremental history search.
I have the history set up properly

HISTSIZE=10000
SAVEHIST=10000
HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history

and I used vi key bindings

bindkey -v

But Ctrl+R does not work. It removes the line above the current line, which is not the behavior it should have in vim either.

Any suggestions?

btw a quick work-around is to use non-incremental search: `Ctrl`+`[` `/` ... — maxschlepzig, Jan 27 '12 at 14:16
Ctrl-R is an `emacs` shortcut. To search backwards in `vi`, it's `?`, though in zsh's `vi` mode `/` and `?` are reversed as you generally want to search backwards. — Stéphane Chazelas, Dec 15 '19 at 21:33

score 129 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 24 '14 at 10:32

129

If I recall correctly, you need to explicitly set it, even with bindkey -v. Use something like this:

bindkey -v
bindkey '^R' history-incremental-search-backward

edited Apr 24 '14 at 10:32

Sébastien

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answered Jan 27 '12 at 13:54

Chris Down

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5

perhaps `history-incremental-pattern-search-backward` is an alternative action to use in that context. – maxschlepzig Jan 27 '12 at 14:18
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@maxschlepzig sorry what is the difference between the two? – Ali Jan 27 '12 at 15:34
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@Ali, with the *-pattern-* versions you can use search-patterns (which style, i.e. globbing or regex (?) depends on other parts of your zsh-configuration) - like e.g. you can use the search-pattern `fo*bar` with `grep` to match 'fobar', 'foobar', 'fooobar' etc. – maxschlepzig Jan 27 '12 at 21:03
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I was getting an error. Wrapping ^R in double quotes did it. `bindkey "^R" history-incremental-pattern-search-backward` – Ramon Tayag Sep 08 '13 at 06:26
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`bindkey -v` must precede `history-incremental-search-backward` – Deniz Feb 21 '19 at 07:22
Is there a fuzzy search alternative? – creanion May 08 '22 at 09:37

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 24 '20 at 20:39

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bindkey -e also works and makes zsh behave more like bash. It restores other things that you may have been using like ctrl-A (beginning of line), ctrl-K (delete everything to the right of the cursor).

answered Mar 24 '20 at 20:39

KFunk

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This is a great answer, thanks. It solves a couple of problems at once, in a clean way. – hraban Mar 30 '21 at 10:28
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Just adding a comment to explain that this sets so-called "emacs mode" which provides a lot of these settings even to those like me who aren't into emacs. – Steven Lu Nov 26 '21 at 22:34

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 15 '19 at 21:19

7

OMZ framework has zsh-history-substring-search plugin pre-packaged. Just enable & use.

plugins=(git history-substring-search)

answered Dec 15 '19 at 21:19

Mohnish

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How to enable reverse search in zsh?

3 Answers3