Can I alias `!<editor>` in bashrc? [duplicate]

Question

I use emacs as an editor in the command line (aliased with alias em='emacs -nw') and would like to be able to make an alias for !em to open up the file most recently opened in emacs.

I've tried alias e='!em', alias e='${!}em', alias e='${!em}', but so far can't find anything that works.

I've found some related posts about aliasing !!:

alias for a command using !! to recall the last command

Answer 1

I don't think history expansion is done after expanding aliases, so you'd need to use history -p to do it explicitly:

alias e='eval "$(history -p !em)"'

Though that doesn't work either in this case, since aliases aren't expanded after command substitution. But functions work, so these two should do it:

em() { emacs -nw "$@"; }
e() { eval "$(history -p !em)"; }

The latter could be an alias.

Answer 2

If you alias em as you described, then you should not attempt to make an additional alias for !em. ! invokes the shell history mechanism, so the command "!em" will repeat the most recent use of your alias (which might not be the last file actually edited by emacs, however.)