100% agree. FWIW I use ctrl-r all day every day in emacs and also in the shell and its... fine.
In my opinion, the one thing that would make a difference is a longer and broader history.
In my opinion, the one thing that would make a difference is a longer and broader history.
export HISTSIZE=-1; export HISTFILESIZE=-1
Also, one can bind the 'up' key to do the search action too, which I think is pretty convenient, my bindings are for zsh but I think it should also work in bash:
bindkey '^[[5~' up-line-or-history
bindkey '^[[6~' down-line-or-history