Kinda weird that the author mentions Ctrl-R but not readline. History searching actually works for everything that supports readline, e.g. bash, ipython, psql, henplus, etc, although personally I use page-up / page-down with:

    "\e[5~": history-search-backward
    "\e[6~": history-search-forward

The terminal experience becomes crappy when there is no readline support, e.g. everything on Windows, sqlplus, db2, etc. When there is no readline, I really can't love the terminal.

> I use page-up / page-down with

I use ctrl-r because it is easier to type.

> experience becomes crappy when there is no readline support, e.g. everything on Windows, sqlplus, db2, etc.

If you have rlwrap, you can generally do `rlwrap -r app-that-doesn't-play-well`