neat. that's pretty much what i had in mind, but only for a single rename. i just did a search and embarrassingly discovered imv which is part of the renameut

neat. that's pretty much what i had in mind, but only for a single rename. i just did a search and embarrassingly discovered imv which is part of the renameutils package which also contains qmv, a tool to batch rename lots of files by loading the list into an editor. embarrassed because qmv is my favourite tool for batch renaming, and so i have it already installed. imv is exactly what i am looking for, for the single file rename case: "The imv ("interactive move") program, is trivial but useful when you are too lazy to type (or even complete) the name of the file to rename twice. It allows a file name to be edited in the terminal using the GNU Readline library." so we can consider this problem solved. back to alternative shells: i am just spoiled by fish (no the fish isn't spoiled): autosuggestion and non-incremental search like fish are a requirement for me to consider any other shell now. btw: autosuggestion for elvish is being discussed here: https://github.com/elves/elvish/issues/322 https://github.com/elves/elvish/issues/322 and apparently it has some of that search feature too (from a comment): "type the beginning of a command and press Up and cycle through all the commands that start with the string I typed." i am going to have to try that.