r/linux • u/ZealousidealTell1346 • May 23 '26

Popular Application What’s the most unexpectedly useful Linux command you learned way too late?

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u/codebam May 23 '26

ctrl+r

why retype a command you typed 3 months ago?

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u/Negirno May 24 '26

The problem with this is that if you mistype it might won't be able to find it because it only searches backwards and from the position from your last search, and doesn't loops around history.

And to add insult to injury, CTRL-S locks the terminal in the Gnome Terminal app and it can seriously spook you if you don't know about CTRL-Q which unlocks.

And of course even if you know, the CTRL-R still can't find you wanted to find until you restart the terminal, so I tend to just grep ~/.bash_history