Re: why does the shell show commands foolishly when I press UP key?
On Nov 9, 2007, at 12:25 AM, Serena Cantor wrote:
I often use UP key to get commands entered previously. The shell
show some commands again and
again, just because I have used them several times. Can the shell be
more smart?
Any shell could be made smarter -- the source code is available, of
course.
But to try to answer your question in a more helpful way -- you might
try different shells. Almost every one that has command history on
the command line handles it differently.
There's ksh and friends who can have vi-like or emacs-like keybindings
for such things, so those that spend "all day" in those editors can
feel more comfortable/productive.
There's tcsh that behaves quite differently than bash, but which can
be useful at times.
There's bash (of course, and probably what you're thinking of since
it's the default shell on most Linux distros).
There's zsh which I've never really gotten into, but that has a huge
following amongst some of the local Linux LUG crowd around here.
And more...
The options available, even for the lazy like me who don't want to
hack on the code and change the behavior, are many. Enough that you
could spend a signficant number of days/weeks/months learning all the
ins and outs of each shell.
Maybe the command history and completion behaviors of a particular
shell that's already "out there" would be enough motivation for you to
also try some other shells out and do some scripting in each? Lots of
options!
--
Nate Duehr
nate@natetech.com
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