command line completion / search

In older releases of Matlab, when you started typing a line that matched the beginning of a line in your command history, pressing the up arrow would take you to that line. In 2014a, pressing the up arrow takes you to the last line that contains a matching string anywhere in the line, which I find much less helpful. How do I tell it that I want to match the beginning of the line?

[Daniel]

I just discovered that this is only a problem on Macintosh, not Windows.

[John D'Errico]

I just checked on my Mac, using R2014b. No such problem.

Answer 1

[Peter Muellers]

In R2014a and subsequent releases the default behavior is "Match Beginning", just as it has always been. R2014a did introduce the "Match Anywhere" option but it was only selectable from the drop down in the upper-left corner of the command history window. R2014b exposed this option in the preferences. I think the only way you could have acquired the "Match Anywhere" behavior without explicitly selecting it would have been by running the R2014a pre-release, where MathWorks experimented with having "Match Anywhere" as the default.

[K E]

To change this, go to Environment tab of command window: Preferences > Command History > Match Beginning. I was getting this problem on my PC, probably because I had absentmindedly changed a preference. R2015b.

[Niraj Desai]

Thank you. This explains how to change the matching behavior. This should be the accepted answer, not the one you responded to.

Answer 2

[John D'Errico]

I believe the reason I have no problem on my Mac is because of the preferences. In the preferences "Command History" tab, you can select "Match anywhere", or "Match beginning" via a choice of radio buttons. Logically, match beginning is what you wish to use. I tested it by changing that button, and I can get the behavior you saw.

So this is NOT a Mac specific issue, but a simple preference issue. Of course, it is vaguely possible that they changed this from R2014a to R2014b. In that case, time for an upgrade.

[Daniel]

As it turns out, this is a version-specific issue. I've installed R2014b and (unlike R2014a) it has the buttons you described, in both the Mac and Windows versions.