Helpful shell shortcuts
So this may be a little basic, but I find myself using these two shortcuts quite a bit while at the shell.
If you ever find yourself wanting to “reuse” the last argument in a command — for example, here I move a file from one location into /var/tmp and I want to “cd” into /var/tmp without having to type it, use the shell variable !$…
locutus:~
(svoboda)> dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/blah bs=1024000 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024000 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.0109023 s, 93.9 MB/s
locutus:~
(svoboda)> mv /tmp/blah /var/tmp
locutus:~
(svoboda)> cd !$
cd /var/tmp
locutus:/var/tmp
(svoboda)> pwd
/var/tmp
If you wanted to “preface” your last command, you can throw anything you want into the shell followed by the !! shell shortcut.
locutus:/var/tmp
(svoboda)> “Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance”
-bash: Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance: command not found
locutus:/var/tmp
(svoboda)> echo !!
echo “Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance”
Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance
The first line mearly “shows” what is being executed, with the second line executing the actual command. Not rocket science, but whatever helps on saving keystrokes!
Jeff Schroeder on December 22nd, 2008
Here are a few I use constantly that expand on this post. In true regex fashion, !^ is the first argument of the previous command just like !$ is the last argument of the previous command. Going even further, !:X will expand to argument X where X is a number.
Example:
$ echo 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
$ echo !^
1
$ echo 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
$ echo !:3
3
Take a look at bash(1) and search for “Event Designators”.