Vista - FEATURE REQUEST: better history support

The incremental history search (Ctrl-R, Ctrl-S) in bash is VERY nice and we
need it in PowerShell.

I wrote a function 'last' to attempt something similar, but it's not nearly
as good. We need support for this from within the line editor.

# runs the last command in the history that matches the given regular
expression.
# TODO: it'd be nice if this was closer to bash's excellent Ctrl-R support
# examples:
# last submit # run, eg, a recent "sd submit -c xxx" command
# last "sdp pack" # run, eg, a recent "sdp pack" command
function last($match)
{
$local:items = (get-history)
for($local:i=$items.length-1; $i -gt 0; $i--)
{
$local:hi = $items[$i]
if($hi.commandLine -match $match)
{
$local:cl = $hi.commandLine
# exclude other 'last' commands unless the match explicitly contained
'last'
# TODO: this is dumb because by making assumptions about the name, it
prevents users
# from effectively aliasing the function. it should be more like
bash's Ctrl-R support
if($cl.startsWith("last ") -and !$match.contains("last"))
{
continue
}

if($cl.length -gt 40) { $cl = $cl.substring(0, 40) + "..." }
$local:input = (read-host "Run '$cl' [Yes/No/Quit]?").toLower()
if($input -eq "y" -or $input -eq "yes")
{
invoke-history $hi.ID
return
}
elseif($input -eq "q" -or $input -eq "quit")
{
return
}
}
}

echo "No matches."
}

"Adam Milazzo [MSFT]" <adamm@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:%236h0U7avGHA.2260@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> The incremental history search (Ctrl-R, Ctrl-S) in bash is VERY nice and
> we need it in PowerShell.

The built-in history feature of the console is OK. Try typing in the first
part of a command that you entered before and press F8 (keep pressing F8)
for more matches. You can also press F7 to get a character mode window of
the history. Certainly not as powerful as a regex search engine but still
quite useful.

--
Keith

Keith Hill [MVP] wrote:
> "Adam Milazzo [MSFT]" <adamm@san.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:%236h0U7avGHA.2260@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> The incremental history search (Ctrl-R, Ctrl-S) in bash is VERY nice
>> and we need it in PowerShell.
>
> The built-in history feature of the console is OK. Try typing in the
> first part of a command that you entered before and press F8 (keep
> pressing F8) for more matches. You can also press F7 to get a character
> mode window of the history. Certainly not as powerful as a regex search
> engine but still quite useful.

F8, huh? That's not too bad. Although it'd be better if it wasn't a
prefix, but an arbitrary substring. (Often many commands start the same.)

It'd also be better if I didn't have to move my hand too far.

By the way, how did you find out about this? I don't remember reading
about it in the user guide...

Thanks,
-- Adam

> By the way, how did you find out about this? I don't remember reading
> about it in the user guide...

F7, F8 and etc. are standard features of windows console, not PowerShell.
Try cmd.exe and you will see the same.

--
Thanks,
Roman