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?

Answer 1

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 $.