A way for command history to jump whole commands instead of individual lines?

[Hobo]

I tried googling around but couldn't find what I was looking for, maybe just because I don't know what terms to search for if it already exists.

I'd like to make it so that traversing the command history with up-arrow (or ctrl+p) and down-arrow (or ctrl+n) move through entire commands for each button press instead of individual lines of multi-line commands. I thought iTerm2 would be able to recognize this already, especially after the update adding selection boxes, but I didn't find an option for this behavior.

For a more concrete example of what I'm looking for, if I run the commands in the following order:

1. ls -altrh
2. curl \
     --request GET \
     https://google.com
3. export TOKEN=mytoken

Currently pressing the up arrow 3 times will land me on "--request GET \": on first press is export, 2nd press is the URL, 3rd press is on the request option.

I'd like it so that after 3 presses, I'm on the 3rd previous command, in this case ls.

[Adrian Bool]

At least on my config, hitting ctrl+r first results in the behaviour you're after...

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[Adrian Bool]

Here's another option...

Add the following to your ~/.zshrc:

bindkey "^[[A" history-search-backward

The "^[[A" codes refers to your up arrow; with this bindkey command changing the up arrow's normal association with "up-line-or-history" to "history-search-backward" - with the latter functioning in the way you described.

Note that this is not an iTerm thing; command history is controlled by your shell (zsh by default on Macs these days).

Cheers

aid

[Hobo]

Hi, thanks for the suggestion.

I forgot to call out ctrl+r history in my post. I do use this feature but it has some drawbacks for my personal setup where it truncates the command, so I can't see the entire text for particularly large commands in the history.

It's great normally, but this is also why I was hoping iTerm would have a bit more contextual awareness for the command history and offer a better experience out of the box.

[Hobo]

Hmm that's a great suggestion I wasn't aware of this. Doing it for forward and backwards with up and down arrows almost does what I want, but is missing some nuance. Once I press left to go back a character, then up/down should no longer search history and should instead move by line.

Thanks for the inspiration, I'll have to keep researching further into this. I do think the complexity level I'm looking for makes it better suited to a Terminal emulator feature rather than the shell itself but in the meantime I'll continue to see what I can discover. Thanks!

[George Nachman]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

If you install shell integration, cmd-shift-up and down arrows do this.

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[Hobo]

Oh wow thank you so much! That is exactly what I was hoping for.

Out of interest, where could I have found this feature in the docs? I tried searching a bit but I am guessing I didn't quite know the correct terms to use or look in the right places.

[George Nachman]

It is mentioned here:

https://arc.net/l/quote/dcquvccf

But I admit that’s not easy to find. Where did you look? I’d like to make it easier to find.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/iterm2-discuss/f23a87df-a8d9-4463-9722-a2b993ab7b73n%40googlegroups.com.

[Hobo]

I think the first place I looked was command selection https://iterm2.com/documentation-command-selection.html

From here I may have even went to the shell integration page but skipped down to the "command history" subheader looking for it. After that I did some googling and nothing led me to the marks section for my answer, until you shared it directly.