Search text in command output on a PuTTY terminal

puttysearchterminal

I would like to know how to search particular text on the terminal. If I do cat of log files, I would like to find certain words like job or summary so that I don't have to read through the entire log file.

I know there have been a similar post about this. The answer from that post is Ctrl + A + [ <text> which doesn't seem to work for me. When I press that I get a message No bracket in top line (press Return) or If I press those keys together I get the message ESC.

It there a way to do this with PuTTY? Alternatively, is there a generic way to search for text in the output of commands?

Best Answer

The Ctrl + a + [ is meant for use within the application screen (an app for multiplexing consoles).

less

Generally the easiest method to do this is to use tools such as less and to pipe the output from whatever application is generating the messages on the console, and search within the application less. You can do so using the forward slash (/) followed by whatever string you're searching for. Hit return to execute the search.

Example

$ less filename.log

...then in less, type a forward slash followed by string to search, foo

grep

In the same vain as above with using less, you can also use tools such as tail to print the lats few lines of a applications log file messages, and also use grep to search for only lines that contain a matching string/pattern.

$ grep "somestring" filename.log

Related Solutions

Zsh History – How to Search History with Text Already Entered at the Prompt

You can use zle's history-search functionality:

bindkey "^[[A" history-beginning-search-backward
bindkey "^[[B" history-beginning-search-forward

This binds Up and Down (adjust for your own escape sequences) to a history search, backwards and forwards, based upon what has already been entered at the prompt.

So, if you were to enter "vim" and hit Up, zsh will traverse backwards through your history for only those commands commencing with "vim".

You can additionally have the cursor placed at the end of the line once you have selected your desired command from zsh's history by using the history-search-end function (typically located in /usr/share/zsh/functions/Zle/) and appending -end to the end of each line, like so:

autoload -U history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-backward-end history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-forward-end history-search-end
bindkey "^[[A" history-beginning-search-backward-end
bindkey "^[[B" history-beginning-search-forward-end

How to enable Control key combinations for GNU screen on putty

In its default configuration, PuTTY sends cursor keys in normal mode, e.g., ^[OA while screen sets the cursor keys to application mode, e.g., ^[[A.

That is done by screen's sending the escape sequence to turn on the keypad (in termcap ks, terminfo smkx). That happens to turn on the application mode for both the numeric keypad and the cursor keys, because both are present in the ks/smkx capability. screen uses this capability if it is present, when initializing the terminal. screen also follows up by sending the string in the termcap CS capability if it is set, hinting that the original design was to use terminal descriptions where only the keypad was initialized by ks/smkx.

You notice this difference because your key bindings expect the strings sent by the cursor keys in normal mode. If you modified the terminal description for screen to omit the part which changes the cursor keys, you could continue to use those bindings.

For instance, you could do this:

infocmp screen >foo
vi foo

and change the assignment

smkx=\E[?1h\E=,

smkx=\E=,

then

tic foo

to compile the modified description. If you do this as your (non-root) user, tic will put the compiled description in your ~/.terminfo directory. There are drawbacks to this approach, and using tput to obtain key-binding information is preferable. But it is simple.