How new is ctrl+r?

Question

I'm wonderering when this command was introduced and if it is part of some offical linux or is it ubuntu-specific ? How do I search my command-line history for commands I used before?

score 37 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

37

Old.

It's not a Linux thing. The feature you're talking of belongs to the bash shell via the readline library that it uses. It will work identically wherever you can get bash to run, including Windows, the BSDs, OSX, etc.

It's been part of Bash since at least version 1.14.7 (from 1995), since the manpage of that version mentions reverse-search-history much the same way today's manpages do. You can check the source from the GNU repository.

It's also mentioned in the FEATURES file of bash-1.05, which apparently is from 1990.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Nov 30 '15 at 05:13

muru

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10

I would say, 1990 is very old. ;) – A.B. Nov 30 '15 at 05:50

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '15 at 19:15

14

It originates with Emacs, not bash so it probably goes back to 1983 at least, if not 1975.

answered Nov 30 '15 at 19:15

zpgidaman

141

How new is ctrl+r?

2 Answers2

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