Using fzf to Search Bash History

Been mashing bash commands in a mad dash to thrash that crash-inducing bug? We've all been there and then in the aftermath of such a session how do we find that one command that fixed everything?

ctrl+r provides a pretty nice experience when searching through your bash history but I wanted to give an alternative.

Use fzf

I was first introduced to fzf as a vim fuzzy file finder but learned later that it's uses expand far beyond just vim usage.fzf is a fantastic little tool for searching. fzf is even more fantastic when you start piping everything to it.

Here's the command:

cat ~/.bash_history | fzf | sh

We cat everything to fzf which allows us to fuzzy find the command we're looking for and pipe that to sh to execute.

Easy.

Peasy.