Bash – How to retain cursor position in previous command

bashcommand historyshell

When I iterate over previous commands in bash history, cursor position always jumps at the end of the command. I want some way of remembering current cursor position of last executed command.

This can be useful when trying different command line options for some command. Now I have to press up key and move cursor backwards to where the option was typed to edit it. I want to eliminate this second step if it is possible.

I am using bash, but solutions for other shells are also interesting.

Best Answer

Maybe this is the option you're looking for?

history-preserve-point (Off)
        If  set to On, the history code attempts to place point at the
        same location on each history line retrieved 
        with previous-history or next-history.

To turn it on, add this to your ~/.inputrc:

set history-preserve-point on

Related Solutions

Bash – How to stop bash editing the history when I reuse and modify an entry

Turns out revert-all-at-newline is the answer. I needed to include set revert-all-at-newline on in my ~/.inputrc file, since using the set command at the bash prompt had no effect. (Then, of course, I had to start a new shell.)

Also, I found that ~/.inputrc is loaded instead of /etc/inputrc if present, which means that any defaults defined in the latter are no longer active when you create ~/.inputrc. To fix this, start ~/.inputrc with $include /etc/inputrc.

Thanks to @StéphaneChazelas for pointing me in the right direction.

Shell – Save cursor position and restore it in terminal

Most of the terminals you are likely to use implement escape sequences for saving and restoring the cursor position. Those are the sc (save cursor) and rc (restore cursor) capabilities in the terminal description, which you can use via tput (just like cup):

tput sc
tput cup 50 10
echo some stuff
echo more stuff
tput rc

However, if your program writes enough text to force scrolling, the restored position will still be on the same place on the terminal's screen. It does not move along with the scrolled text.

POSIX, by the way, documents only part of tput because the tool is actually part of another standard, X/Open Curses. That is summarized in the portability section of the manual page.

Back to the question: there are no escape sequences which track the buffer position (accounting for scrolling). To get that, your application would have to keep track of what was sent to the screen. Solving that sort of problem is what the curses library is for. In a plain command-line application, there is not much that you can do.

Best Answer

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Bash – How to stop bash editing the history when I reuse and modify an entry

Shell – Save cursor position and restore it in terminal

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