Or, you could just do nothing at all since this is bash's default behaviour.

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Actually, bash's default behavior is to bind the up and down arrows to previous-history and next-history, not history-search-backward and history-search-forward.

If you're going to make snide remarks, I suggest you actually try the hint first before you open your mouth.

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I accomplished this with
"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
in my .inputrc. I think that's essentially equivalent.

PS, don't forget to add these to your .inputrc while you're at it:
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set completion-ignore-case on

---
--
Listen To My iTunes Library (6500+ songs, iTunes 4 required)

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I'd like to bind option-up and option-down to history-search-backward and history-search-forward, respectively, but can't figure out how.

The readline man page leads me to believe I could use \M-[A. but this doesn't work.

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Hmm, did you try \\M-[A to protect the shell of interpreting the backslash? Or '\M-[A' ?

Just my .02,
Henrik

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I haven't been able to get this to work; i've added it to .bash_profile, opened new terminals, quit Terminal, and still no go.

Do I need a specific terminal type in Preferences? Or some setting in emulation?

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I could not get the suggestions here to work, I ended up doing the following.
Type this into vi ~/.bash_profile, and in place of

<up>

type control + v, then up arrow. In place of

<down>

type control + v then down arrow. (Control V tells vi to put the next character in the doc, rather than just moving up when you press up arrow etc.)

bind '"<up>":history-search-backward'
bind '"<down>":history-search-forward'

Then close all Terminal windows, and quit the app, then open Terminal again and you should have the feature.

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I had to use:

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

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I've assigned the commands to ⌥↑ and ⌥↓ instead. If you want the shortcuts to be available in other shells and programs, you can add them to ~/.inputrc (which is used to configure the same Readline keybindings and settings that can be set with the bind builtin).

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

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