smex

> It keeps a history for that session, but so far I have not found a way to maintain history between sessions. I use prescient.el [0] with prescient-persist-mode for this, though a quick look seems that SMEX also has something similar [1] but I have not used that so I can't say anything about how it works. [0]: https://github.com/radian-software/prescient.el [1]: https://github.com/nonsequitur/smex#persistence

> select commands and data iteratively ... Emacs is way better in that sense Bind up/down to history-search-backward/history-search-forward. In ~/.inputrc # your terminal might send something else for the # for the up/down keys; check with ^v<key> # UP "\e[A": history-search-backward # DOWN "\e[B": history-search-forward (note that this affects anything that uses readline, not just bash) The default (previous-history/next-history) only step through history one item at a time. The history-search- commands step through only the history entries that match the prefix you have already typed. (i.e. typing "cp<UP>" gets the last "cp ..." command; continuing to press <UP> steps through all of the "cp ..." commands in ${HISTFILE}). As your history file grows, this ends up kind of like smex[1] (ido-mode for M-x that prefers

For emacs M-x completion, I prefer smex.[1][2] It's like ido, but reorders the commands it presents to you in most-frequently-used order, which can be a real time-saver. [1] - http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Smex [2] - https://github.com/nonsequitur/smex/

* Smex. This adds IDO completion to M-x. Can't live without it. http://github.com/nonsequitur/smex/ * Undo-tree. (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/UndoTree) Makes emacs undo useful. This has been one of the most useful functions I've added to my .emacs: (defun xsteve-ido-choose-from-recentf () "Use ido to select a recently opened file from the `recentf-list'" (interactive) (let ((home (expand-file-name (getenv "HOME")))) (find-file (ido-completing-read "Recentf open: " (mapcar (lambda (path) (replace-regexp-in-string home "~" path)) recentf-list) nil t)))) (global-set-key [(meta f11)] 'xsteve-ido-choose-from-recentf) From: http://www.xsteve.at/prg/emacs/power-user-tips