diff --git a/IPython/core/splitinput.py b/IPython/core/splitinput.py
index a8c680e..7b95772 100644
--- a/IPython/core/splitinput.py
+++ b/IPython/core/splitinput.py
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ from IPython.utils.encoding import get_stream_enc
 line_split = re.compile("""
              ^(\s*)               # any leading space
              ([,;/%]|!!?|\?\??)?  # escape character or characters
-             \s*(%?[\w\.\*]*)     # function/method, possibly with leading %
+             \s*(%{0,2}[\w\.\*]*)     # function/method, possibly with leading %
                                   # to correctly treat things like '?%magic'
              (.*?$|$)             # rest of line
              """, re.VERBOSE)
diff --git a/IPython/core/tests/test_splitinput.py b/IPython/core/tests/test_splitinput.py
index cfc7209..4c31b0e 100644
--- a/IPython/core/tests/test_splitinput.py
+++ b/IPython/core/tests/test_splitinput.py
@@ -20,7 +20,10 @@ tests = [
     ('  ;ls', ('  ', ';', 'ls', '')),
     ('f.g(x)',  ('', '', 'f.g', '(x)')),
     ('f.g (x)', ('', '', 'f.g', '(x)')),
-    ('?%hist', ('', '?', '%hist', '')),
+    ('?%hist1', ('', '?', '%hist1', '')),
+    ('?%%hist2', ('', '?', '%%hist2', '')),
+    ('??%hist3', ('', '??', '%hist3', '')),
+    ('??%%hist4', ('', '??', '%%hist4', '')),
     ('?x*', ('', '?', 'x*', '')),
     ]
 if py3compat.PY3: