How to do the ESCAPE + “_” shortcut in bash?

Question

How can I set up my bash to replace ESCAPE+_ with the last word from the previous command?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Try with Alt-.

Then lets see whether ESC-_ works.

Answer 2

In the readline library that bash uses for these commands, the command for manipulating the shell history in this fashion is yank-last-arg, by default bound to Mod1. and Mod1_, where Mod1 is typically Alt or Escape:

yank-last-arg (M-., M-_)
Insert the last argument to the previous command (the last word of the previous history entry). With an argument, behave exactly like yank-nth-arg. Successive calls to yank-last-arg move back through the history list, inserting the last argument of each line in turn.¹

You can use either; or you can bind it to another sequence in your .inputrc, like so:

"\ep": yank-last-arg

which would bind it to Mod1p.

^{1. http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl3_readline.htm}

Answer 3

You can also use !$ but that does not paste the actual word into the command line for editing like Esc-_ does.

http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#History-Interaction