Is there a psql equivalent of bash's reverse-search-history?

Question

I am very fond of bash's reverse-search-history (C-r) (command-line feature):

Search backward starting at the current line and moving ‘up’ through the history as necessary. This is an incremental search.

When I hit control-r in bash, I get the following:

(reverse-i-search)`':

And I am able to type characters of previously executed commands, honing in on what I am looking for. If I make a mistake, I can enter control-h to erase a character (equivalent of backspace).

This command-line functionality makes it extremely easy to refer to previously executed commands. I am wondering if such a capability exists for psql. I find it extremely inefficient to rely on just control-p and control-n.

For what it's worth, I am using PostgreSQL 9.3.1 on x86_64-apple-darwin13.0.0, compiled by Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn), 64-bit - obtained via Postgres.app.

Of course, and it has no effect for me. Are you suggesting `ctrl-r` works for you?? — user664833, Apr 18 '14 at 05:30
I installed `rlwrap` via homebrew (`brew install rlwrap`) and tried it out (`rlwrap psql`) - but `control-r` still does not work; in fact, it behaves in the exact same way as `control-r` without `rlwrap` (which is that *nothing happens*). Perhaps this is the sign of a deeper problem. — user664833, Apr 18 '14 at 16:31
`ctrl-r` is normally provided by the readline library. It appears there's an [open issue](https://github.com/PostgresApp/PostgresApp/issues/144) for postgres.app about this. — Daniel Vérité, Apr 18 '14 at 17:05
I use homebrew's postgresql's `/usr/local/bin/psql` and reverse-search works great. — nicerobot, Sep 17 '14 at 16:06

score 17 · Answer 1 · answered May 04 '15 at 23:57

17

A conversation about this on GitHub led to an interim "quick fix" solution:

open ~/.editrc and add:

bind "^R" em-inc-search-prev

Apparently the bigger issue is that PostgresApp uses libedit instead of libreadline. And supposedly libedit lacks some command-line features of libreadline, so until PostgresApp is compiled against libreadline, just use the above quick fix.

answered May 04 '15 at 23:57

user664833

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Do you have to be in psql to use it? – Muhammad Umer Aug 06 '20 at 19:46

Is there a psql equivalent of bash's reverse-search-history?

1 Answers1