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Replace Last Command in Shell

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Whether I fat-finger a command or my MacBook Pro keyboard's keys don't want to respond like they should, I'm frequently misspelling commands.  What's more frustrating is that many of these commands are long, taking making fixing theme time-consuming.

Luckily a Twitter follower is looking out for me, providing me a quick command for fixing the misspelled command:

~ $ crul davidwalsh.name
-bash: crul: command not found
~ $ ^crul^curl
curl davidwalsh.name
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="https://davidwalsh.name/">here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache Server at davidwalsh.name Port 80</address>
</body></html>

The ^ command usage above returns fixes the spelling from the previous command, executes the command, and as a bonus, adds the correct command to history.

Small tips like these and git checkout - make my command life experience so much better.  What's your favorite command line trick?

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Discussion

  1. André Jaenisch

    Hi David,

    someone pointed me to https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck/blob/master/README.md last time I complained.

    Kind regards

    André

  2. Daniel

    Hi David,

    it works fine, but does not update bash’s history

    My favorite command is CTRL-R and reuse older commands

    Abrazos, Daniel

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