You can still use ctrl+r, but you need to provide the  history file in one piece, using &quot;history -r &lt;file&gt;&quot; command. I do it in the following way, maybe it can serve you too:<p><pre><code>  cat `find &quot;${HOME}&#x2F;.history&quot; -type f | grep -v &quot;.allhistory&quot;` &gt; ${HOME}&#x2F;.history&#x2F;.allhistory
  history -r ${HOME}&#x2F;.history&#x2F;.allhistory</code></pre>