How can I set my BASH history scrolling to filter by what I've already typed?

Question

Given a history of commands:

1 pwd
2 mysql -u root -p
3 ps -ef | more
4 top
5 mysql -h 192.168.1.101 -u root -p

When you press the Up arrow, you scroll through all those commands. I've read it somewhere before (and done it in my work PC) that you can set-up BASH such that when I first type p then press the Up arrow, it would only scroll through all commands in history that starts with "p" (pwd and ps -ef | more). When I type mysql then press Up, then it would only scroll through all commands starting with "mysql".

I'd like to set my laptop to use this, but I can't find the instructions again.

Answer 1

You can configure incremental searching in /etc/inputrc (for machine-wide changes), or ~/.inputrc (just for your user account).

Add these two lines:

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward

Answer 2

Alternately, you could press ctrl+R to enter reverse-i-search mode. You can then start typing and it will find the first prior line that matches the string you type (ie, type m and it will jump back to mysql -h 192.168.1.101 -u root -p; then type o and it will jump back to ps -ef | more as that's the first line with mo in.

You can hit ctrl+r again to search for the match before that (ie, ctrl+r,my,ctrl+r would take you to the second-last command starting with mysql)

You can read more about searching Readline's history search, commands for interacting with the history, and how you can modify the default keybindings and behavious in man bash (or online)