Search Terminal Output

Question

Using a default terminal and bash, there is no functionality to search the standard output of commands.

One can gain such functionality using other tools, like emacs shell or screen, but I am wondering why such a useful feature is missing, I do remember a simple C-F used to work in terminals.

Is there a way to make the Gnome terminal app support output search? or is there a better terminal app that support searching output natively?

Answer 1

You could try script(1). On login just call script and you can then search through the typescript file it generates. It's not a single keystroke like emacs shell and it is buffered, but it might be better than nothing.

Answer 2

Don't know gnome-terminal but urxvt does that by typing Alt + s. It should be in your repositories, lookup the package rxvt-unicode.

Answer 3

I believe that this can be done with zsh, but I don't use zsh so I don't know the exact configuration that would be required.

Answer 4

Using xterm, you can log everything the terminal displays to a file. Then you can open that file in an editor or less.

Answer 5

In screen you can enter copy mode and do searches on output. You can also do logging of output to a file and search it any way you normally would (grep, less, etc.).