I've been using ctrl + R more now :3.. though I definitely used to ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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check out fzf (install fzf and add (assuming bash) eval "$(fzf --bash)" to your .bashrc)
Makes ctrl+r a superpower
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Ctrl + r with fzf and you’ll never go back.
Woah Ctrl R looks super cool, never knew that I could do that before…
...until you press up one too many times and enter the same command but with a typo. Again.
Been there, done that.
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Fish once again undefeated. If I want to find that weird image magick command I used earlier with foo.png in it I just type foo.png, hit up and its usually the first one. It doesnt matter where foo.png occurs in the command, fish will find it.
The number of people who don’t reverse-I-search is too damn high
^r
Ctrl-r, l ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r, ctrl-r. To get ls.
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I typed it once, I'm not typing it again
I’ve probably done that for ls
taptaptaptap.... taptaptaptap.... taptaptaptap taptaptaptap taptaptaptap
.... taptaptaptap
... tap ...
... shit I was on a different user when I typed it.
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Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1168/
tar -jcvf archive.tbz ~/stuff/*
Of course I don't know the bomb had bzip2 on it.. I wonder if we can start with ls to see if there's anything to tar or untar
tar -xvf
but only because I had to look it up twice so now my brain has committed it to memory
I don't even know what it does
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tar --help
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O(n) access, very efficient.
No, I do not care to share the value of n
Or, just type the command “history”, find the index number of the desired command, then type “! ”, then .
That's way more mental effort than pressing up a bunch of times.
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https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin is a great tool to manage and search your shell history. I especially enjoy it being able to search commands based on the working directory I was in when I ran them.
It also has more features (which I don't use) to manage dotfiles and sync shell history across hosts/devices.
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You have to be a linux user to use the console now?
cat ~/.bash_history | grep
Useless use of cat?
Yes, it was meant to be a self deprecating admission that I have used this unnecessarily verbose command.
Ah. Well. I can not be blameless on this. I also probably use cat unnecessarily still. But less so with grep these days. I'm getting better... I swear!
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- zsh-autosuggestions
history | fzfalias cat="bat --plain --theme=gruvbox-dark"
Aliasing cat or any other ubiquitous shell utility to a replacement is a mistake. Garuda did this, and it was driving me crazy why cat was giving me errors. Turns out that they had aliased bat to cat, and since bat is a different program, it didn't work in exactly the same way, and an update had introduced some unexpected behavior.
Drop-in replacements are dumb. Just learn to use a different command.
I think it's ok to add this in a personal .zshrc, not on a distro level:
If it breaks something - I'd probably know why and can easily fix it by removing alias/calling cat directly.
Also, scripts almost always use bash or sh in shebang, not zsh. So it only triggers if I type cat in terminal.
It's better to learn the new command, then it still works when you use a different machine that doesn't have your alias
If you are me, there is no brain space for remembering new commands. I can already barely hold on to few dozens that I use often. And occasionally when I need "that one that does that niche thing... how was it?" program - I just sit there sifting through logs for couple minutes.
Today it was od (tbh it's od almost half the time; not really the best name to memorize (I really need to make a note or something, so I stop forgetting it, lol))
Also, for this reason I went to great lengths to keep my ~/.zsh_history protected from being randomly deleted/overwritten by mistake, as it happened a couple of times. Currently it's sitting at around 30_000 lines, oldest command is 2 years old.
Also, even zsh scripts don't read your .zshrc by default.
In fish, you can enter part of the command, and then press up to search for it. It's kinda awesome.
That's what I do in bash except for pressing up it's ctrl+r. FZF does the fuzzy finding for me. It's so convenient.
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