How to refer to a command beginning with $?

Question

Assume that the history list contains the command e='echo a b c' and then $e.

How to refer to the command $e using the history expansion feature of bash?

@AdminBee !$ refers the last word of the last command. If $e is not the last command, !$ does not work. — tmpbin, Jul 10, 2020 at 12:34
This works for your example: !?$, but it searches $anywhere in the command, not only in the beginning. So if there is some other command with $ e.g. echo "$e" coming after $e ..., you get that. — pLumo, Jul 10, 2020 at 13:20

mkayaalp · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-02 04:53:42Z

0

Here is an alternative you can set an alias for:

eval `history |awk '/^  [0-9]*  [$]/{print $2}'|tail -n 1`

It searches the history for the last command starting with $ and evaluates the result. Although, it will not work with multiline commands.

I would suggest using Ctrl+R, typing $, and cycling through previous commands matching $.

answered Apr 2, 2021 at 4:53

mkayaalp

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