Type ^R and some string, At the point while we are typing that the search fails, all that happens is the word "failed" gets added at front,
(reverse-i-search)`nni': set jida^Ci.org/geo/house_numbering/grids/us/il/lake/lake_county/ (failed reverse-i-search)`nnii': set jida^Ci.org/geo/house_numbering/grids/us/il/lake/lake_county/ (The ^Cs are where I quit in order to make this "screenshot".) The average Joe, if looking up at his screen, will mostly just notice the line getting longer and longer for each character he types, no matter if it started failing many characters ago. Hmmm, how does emacs handle such situations? Well when the first failed character is entered there is a flash. Then every additional useless character entered gets a red background. Anyway Bash could be more aggressive to wake the user up to the fact that "He is hiking up the wrong trail. Sending money to candidates who already quit the race and shut their accounts." -- typing for no reason. Let's see, it could flash/beep on each useless character. And or refuse to echo them etc. Anyway, after such improvements the average user, instead of typing five or six useless characters before realizing failure has already occurred, would type just one or two! One might say that negative doggy training (beeps, red characters (if color turned on), frozen line), wouldn't be needed if the user would just please be aware of the word "failed" at the start of the line. Well that word isn't even in uppercase.
