Unable to forward search Bash history similarly as with CTRL-r
You can search forward as well. From the bash info manual, "8.2.5 Searching for Commands in the History":
To search backward in the history for a particular string, type
C-r. TypingC-ssearches forward through the history.
The problem with Ctrl-S however is that sometimes collides with XON/XOFF flow control (in Konsole for instance). The searching is a readline feature however, and you should be able to bind it to some other key. Update: Simpler and better is just to disable XON/XOFF by running
stty -ixon
The best trick IMHO is enabling with pgup and pgdown. just put that in your ~/.inputrc
"\e[5~": history-search-forward
"\e[6~": history-search-backward
logout/login, type the first letters and then pgup or pgdown to search throughout history
ctrl-R search all lines containing words, whereas history-search-forward search lines beginning with words
You may want to try https://github.com/dvorka/hstr which allows for "suggest box style" filtering of Bash history with (optional) metrics based ordering i.e. it is much more efficient and faster in both forward and backward directions:
It can be easily bound to Ctrl-r and/or Ctrl-s