ohmyzsh/plugins/history-substring-search

zsh-history-substring-search

This is a clean-room implementation of the Fish shell's history search
feature, where you can type in any part of any command from history and then
press chosen keys, such as the UP and DOWN arrows, to cycle through matches.

Requirements

• ZSH 4.3 or newer

Install

Using the Homebrew package manager:

brew install zsh-history-substring-search
echo 'source $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-history-substring-search/zsh-history-substring-search.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc

Using Fig:

Fig adds apps, shortcuts, and autocomplete to your existing terminal.

Install zsh-history-substring-search in just one click.

Using Oh-my-zsh:

1. Clone this repository in oh-my-zsh's plugins directory:

    git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-history-substring-search
   

2. Activate the plugin in ~/.zshrc:

    plugins=( [plugins...] zsh-history-substring-search)
   

3. Run exec zsh to take changes into account:

    exec zsh
   

Using zplug:

1. Add this repo to ~/.zshrc:

    zplug "zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search", as: plugin
   

Using antigen:

1. Add the antigen bundle command just before antigen apply, like this:

antigen bundle zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search
antigen apply

2. Then, after antigen apply, add the key binding configurations, like this:

# zsh-history-substring-search configuration
bindkey '^[[A' history-substring-search-up # or '\eOA'
bindkey '^[[B' history-substring-search-down # or '\eOB'
HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_ENSURE_UNIQUE=1

Using Zinit:

1. Use the Oh-my-zsh Zinit snippet in ~/.zshrc:

    zinit snippet OMZ::plugins/git/git.plugin.zsh`
   

2. Load the plugin in ~/.zshrc:

    zinit load 'zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search
    zinit ice wait atload'_history_substring_search_config'
   

3. Run exec zsh to take changes into account:

    exec zsh
   

Usage

1. Load this script into your interactive ZSH session:

   source zsh-history-substring-search.zsh
   

   If you want to use zsh-syntax-highlighting along with this script,
   then make sure that you load it before you load this script:

   source zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh
   source zsh-history-substring-search.zsh
   

2. Bind keyboard shortcuts to this script's functions.

   Users typically bind their UP and DOWN arrow keys to this script, thus:

   • Run cat -v in your favorite terminal emulator to observe key codes.
          (NOTE: In some cases, cat -v shows the wrong key codes. If the
     key codes shown by cat -v don't work for you, press <C-v><UP> and
     <C-v><DOWN> at your ZSH command line prompt for correct key codes.)

   • Press the UP arrow key and observe what is printed in your terminal.

   • Press the DOWN arrow key and observe what is printed in your terminal.

   • Press the Control and C keys simultaneously to terminate the cat -v.

   • Use your observations from the previous steps to create key bindings.
     For example, if you observed ^[[A for UP and ^[[B for DOWN, then:

     bindkey '^[[A' history-substring-search-up
     bindkey '^[[B' history-substring-search-down
     

     However, if the observed values don't work, you can try using terminfo:

     bindkey "$terminfo[kcuu1]" history-substring-search-up
     bindkey "$terminfo[kcud1]" history-substring-search-down
     

     Users have also observed that [OA and [OB are correct values,
     even if these were not the observed values. If you are having trouble
     with the observed values, give these a try.

     You might also want to bind the Control-P/N keys for use in EMACS mode:

     bindkey -M emacs '^P' history-substring-search-up
     bindkey -M emacs '^N' history-substring-search-down
     

     You might also want to bind the k and j keys for use in VI mode:

     bindkey -M vicmd 'k' history-substring-search-up
     bindkey -M vicmd 'j' history-substring-search-down
     

3. Type any part of any previous command and then:

   • Press the history-substring-search-up key, which was configured in
     step 2 above, to select the nearest command that (1) contains your query
     and (2) is also older than the current command in your command history.

   • Press the history-substring-search-down key, which was configured in
     step 2 above, to select the nearest command that (1) contains your query
     and (2) is also newer than the current command in your command history.

   • Press ^U the Control and U keys simultaneously to abort the search.

4. If a matching command spans more than one line of text, press the LEFT
   arrow key to move the cursor away from the end of the command, and then:

   • Press the history-substring-search-up key, which was configured in
     step 2 above, to move the cursor to the line above the cursored line.
     When the cursor reaches the first line of the command, pressing the
     history-substring-search-up key again will cause this script to
     perform another search.

   • Press the history-substring-search-down key, which was configured in
     step 2 above, to move the cursor to the line below the cursored line.
     When the cursor reaches the last line of the command, pressing the
     history-substring-search-down key, which was configured in step 2
     above, again will cause this script to perform another search.

Configuration

This script defines the following global variables. You may override their
default values.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT_FOUND is a global variable that defines
  how the query should be highlighted inside a matching command. Its default
  value causes this script to highlight using bold, white text on a magenta
  background. See the "Character Highlighting" section in the zshzle(1) man
  page to learn about the kinds of values you may assign to this variable.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT_NOT_FOUND is a global variable that
  defines how the query should be highlighted when no commands in the
  history match it. Its default value causes this script to highlight using
  bold, white text on a red background. See the "Character Highlighting"
  section in the zshzle(1) man page to learn about the kinds of values you
  may assign to this variable.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_GLOBBING_FLAGS is a global variable that defines
  how the command history will be searched for your query. Its default value
  causes this script to perform a case-insensitive search. See the "Globbing
  Flags" section in the zshexpn(1) man page to learn about the kinds of
  values you may assign to this variable.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_FUZZY is a global variable that defines
  how the command history will be searched for your query. If set to a non-empty
  value, causes this script to perform a fuzzy search by words, matching in
  given order e.g. ab c will match *ab*c*

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_PREFIXED is a global variable that defines how
  the command history will be searched for your query. If set to a non-empty
  value, your query will be matched against the start of each history entry.
  For example, if this variable is empty, ls will match ls -l and echo ls; if it is non-empty, ls will only match ls -l.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_ENSURE_UNIQUE is a global variable that defines
  whether all search results returned are unique. If set to a non-empty
  value, then only unique search results are presented. This behaviour is off
  by default. An alternative way to ensure that search results are unique is
  to use setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS. If this configuration variable is off
  and setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS is unset, then setopt HIST_FIND_NO_DUPS
  is still respected and it makes this script skip duplicate adjacent search
  results as you cycle through them, but this does not guarantee that search
  results are unique: if your search results were "Dog", "Dog", "HotDog",
  "Dog", then cycling them gives "Dog", "HotDog", "Dog". Notice that the "Dog"
  search result appeared twice as you cycled through them. If you wish to
  receive globally unique search results only once, then use this
  configuration variable, or use setopt HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS.

• HISTORY_SUBSTRING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT_TIMEOUT is a global variable that
  defines a timeout in seconds for clearing the search highlight.

History

• September 2009: Peter Stephenson originally wrote this script and it
  published to the zsh-users mailing list.

• January 2011: Guido van Steen (@guidovansteen) revised this script and
  released it under the 3-clause BSD license as part of fizsh, the
  Friendly Interactive ZSHell.

• January 2011: Suraj N. Kurapati (@sunaku) extracted this script from
  fizsh 1.0.1, refactored it heavily, and finally repackaged it as an
  oh-my-zsh plugin and as an independently loadable ZSH script.

• July 2011: Guido van Steen, Suraj N. Kurapati, and Sorin Ionescu
  (@sorin-ionescu) further developed it with Vincent Guerci (@vguerci).

• March 2016: Geza Lore (@gezalore) greatly refactored it in pull request #55.

---

Oh My Zsh Distribution Notes

What you are looking at now is Oh My Zsh's repackaging of zsh-history-substring-search as an OMZ module inside
the Oh My Zsh distribution.

The upstream repo, zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search, can be found on GitHub at
https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search.

Everything above this section is a copy of the original upstream's README, so things may differ slightly when
you're using this inside OMZ. In particular, you do not need to set up key bindings for the up and down arrows
yourself in ~/.zshrc; the OMZ plugin does that for you. You may still want to set up additional emacs- or
vi-specific bindings as mentioned above.