[wplug] smart command history?

[Brandon Kuczenski]

So everyone knows one can select from previously-entered commands by 
pressing up-arrow in a terminal.  And tab-completion can help one fill out 
a partially typed command.  I was wondering if anyone was familiar with 
'Matlab-style' command history for a *sh terminal.  The way Matlab does it 
is: if you have a partially typed command, then up-arrow will only fill-in
previously-entered commands that match the partially-typed string.  For 
example, if one had entered a command like 'chmod a-w *' and then entered 
some other commands, navigating around and such, then if the one entered 
'ch' and pressed up-arrow, it would cycle through only commands beginning 
with 'ch', rather than all recently-entered commands.

One can imagine how this would be useful.

I could imagine a way to do this by searching through the .bash_history 
file, but I think that file only gets written to on logout. Besides, I 
wouldn't know how to hook it into bash.

-Brandon