Bash exeute command from history and pull next/previous command into command line

Question

I'm sure I read it somewhere, but I cannot find the site any more.

Basically I want to search the history "^r" and then execute a command and leave me at the next/previous position in the history. since generally there are commands that I run together it makes sense to be able to easily execute those commands again in sequence.

For example lets say I have 3 commands in the history and I execute the oldest command (3) I would then want to see command 2 in on my command line and if I press up I would see command 3 and down would give me command 1. So in this case after executing command 3 I would be in the same state as if I had pressed up twice from a blank prompt.

Thanks All

Piers

Answer 1

Press Ctrl-o (letter Oh) to execute the command you retrieved and the next command in history will appear at the prompt ready for you to press Ctrl-o or Enter, etc.

Edit:

This command binds Ctrl-Alt-o to a keyboard macro that performs the selected command and moves to the previous one:

bind '"\e\C-o": "\C-o\C-p\C-p"'

You can save this so it's persistent in future sessions by adding the following to your ~/.inputrc:

"\e\C-o": "\C-o\C-p\C-p"