Linux Tips

Use these tricks to speed up your workflow in Linux environments.

Smart arrow keys

At the terminal, pressing the ↑ and ↓ keys allow you to flip through your bash command history. But you can also configure your environment to filter the history by what you type.

For example, if 5 commands back, you typed a long command like git push -f origin HEAD^:master, you would normally have to hit the ↑ key 5 times to call it up. But you can configure so that you can type in just a tiny bit of the command, like gi, and now pressing ↑ will only flip through commands in your history that begin with gi.

To do this, add the following to your .bashrc:

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

Source the file:

source ~/.bashrc

And you’re done!