I am trying to map the reverse-search-history (Ctrl+R) command to a different command combination in iTerm but not sure how? Any help would be appreciated.
The person who mentioned readline is correct.
You can edit your bindings using the bind command (try help bind).
For this particular question, let's see what's bound to Control-R:
$ bind -P |grep C-r
re-read-init-file can be found on "\C-x\C-r".
reverse-search-history can be found on "\C-r".
revert-line can be found on "\M-\C-r".
Ok. One of those is just \C-r which means Control-R. Let's double-check:
$ bind -q reverse-search-history
reverse-search-history can be invoked via "\C-r".
man readline includes:
reverse-search-history (C-r)
Search backward starting at the current line and moving `up'
through the history as necessary. This is an incremental
search.
That looks right. How do we change it? Let's assume you want to use ⌘-B instead. That's Meta-b (aka \M-b) in readline-speak.
Let's try it out:
$ bind '\M-b:reverse-search-history'
$ bind -q reverse-search-history
reverse-search-history can be invoked via "\C-r", "\M-b".
Pressing ⌘-b now triggers reverse search just like Control-R. Control-R is still bound though. We can fix that:
$ bind -r '\C-r'
$ bind -q reverse-search-history
reverse-search-history can be invoked via "\M-b".
This change will hold for the current shell session, but will vanish the next time a shell is invoked. To make the change persistent, do the following:
$ echo '"\M-b": reverse-search-history' >> ~/.inputrc
Now ~/.inputrc contains the desired binding. Any program that uses it for readline configuration (including your shell) will now use the binding you specified.