Replace Last Command in Shell

By  on  

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?

Recent Features

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

  • By
    Write Better JavaScript with Promises

    You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Digg-Style Dynamic Share Widget Using MooTools

    I've always seen Digg as a very progressive website. Digg uses experimental, ajaxified methods for comments and mission-critical functions. One nice touch Digg has added to their website is their hover share widget. Here's how to implement that functionality on your site...

  • By
    Using MooTools For Opacity

    Although it's possible to achieve opacity using CSS, the hacks involved aren't pretty. If you're using the MooTools JavaScript library, opacity is as easy as using an element's "set" method. The following MooTools snippet takes every image with the "opacity" class and sets...

Discussion

  1. 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

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!