(I had to split my comment in two parts because I was getting an error if I did it in one post.)

About bash keyboard shortcuts:
It is not a default setting in most distros, but I think it was in mine when I started with linux, and now I can't live without it. It allows to type a few characters and then, with the page up/down keys, page through all history entries that start with those characters you typed.
For that, put the following into /etc/inputrc or ~/.inputrc:
"\e[5~": history-search-backward
"\e[6~": history-search-forward

Regarding grep:
This comes from the g command of the ed editor, IIRC. "g" means "do the following command globally on the file" (vim has the :g command which does exactly that), "re" is the command to run and means "match with regular expression", and "p" means "if it matches, simply print the line".

PS.: it is unnecessary to touch a file if you write something to it right after (unless you use the result value of touch for error checking).

Happy vimming.