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Place the argument of the most recent command on the shell

Terminal - Place the argument of the most recent command on the shell
'ALT+.' or '<ESC> .'
2009-03-20 11:36:04
User: atoponce
215
Up
Down
Place the argument of the most recent command on the shell

When typing out long arguments, such as:

cp file.txt /var/www/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/

You can put that argument on your command line by holding down the ALT key and pressing the period '.' or by pressing <ESC> then the period '.'. For example:

cd 'ALT+.'

would put '/var/www/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ as my argument. Keeping pressing 'ALT+.' to cycle through arguments of your commands starting from most recent to oldest. This can save a ton of typing.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
<ESC> .
2010-01-22 14:27:44
User: wincus
Tags: bash bash tricks
20
Up
Down
Insert the last argument of the previous command
Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
<ALT> .
2010-01-22 15:06:26
User: new_user
Tags: bash bash tricks
12
Up
Down
Insert the last argument of the previous command
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
<ALT>+<.> or <ALT>+<NUM>+<.> or <ALT>+<NUM>,<ALT>+<.>
2011-03-01 17:41:08
User: aikikode
Tags: bash tricks argument
6
Up
Down
Place the NUM-th argument of the most recent command on the shell

After executing a command with multiple arguments like

cp ./temp/test.sh ~/prog/ifdown.sh

you can paste any argument of the previous command to the console, like

ls -l ALT+1+.

is equivalent to

ls -l ./temp/test.sh

ALT+0+. stands for command itself ('ls' in this case)

Simple ALT+. cycles through last arguments of previous commands.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
<alt+.>
2010-11-17 21:56:47
User: frankman
4
Up
Down
prints the parameter you used on the previous command
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
<Esc> _
2011-03-07 10:06:46
User: homburg
2
Up
Down
Place the argument of the most recent command on the shell

This works if your terminal is in Vi mode

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

hmm, remarkably similar to:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/1545/gets-the-last-string-of-previous-command-with-

Comment by mpb 217 weeks and 6 days ago

Doesn't seem to work for me, they both just re-input what I just typed -- from the same line.

Comment by ozymandias 217 weeks and 6 days ago

@mpb Except that I don't require the use of the shift modifier. Further, comments don't get as high attention as a newly submitted command.

@ozymandias If your previous command didn't have an argument, then it will just place the previous command on the line.

Comment by atoponce 217 weeks and 6 days ago

atoponce -- that's what I tested...

Comment by ozymandias 216 weeks and 6 days ago

Only 'ESC+.' works for me.

Comment by bwoodacre 212 weeks and 1 day ago

Make sure you're holding Alt while pressing period. If you press . again it will go back in history too. If only Esc . works for you, you need to set your terminal to send meta as escape.

Comment by rkulla 162 weeks and 2 days ago

Only Escape + . works for me in Terminal on a Mac.

Comment by erikhansen 158 weeks and 6 days ago

In Vi mode:

<Esc> _

Or to choose arg and _ to activate:

<Alt>+<num>, _
Comment by homburg 115 weeks and 3 days ago

You can also use the numeric prefix to adjust the argument from the previous command which will be used.

In bash, the numeric prefix is Esc (\e below) followed by any number of digits, and the modifier counts parameters from the start, with \e0\e. giving you the command itself, \e2\e. the second parameter.

In zsh, the numeric prefix is extended by \e single-digit, so to pass in 12 it's \e1\e2. For \e. zsh counts backwards with 1 being the *last* parameter, so that \e. and \e1\e. are equivalent. This makes sense, since the numeric prefix is conceptually a repetition count. Except that zsh then makes \e0\. get the command position, same as bash.

Still both useful. Add in on zsh:

zle -N copy-earlier-word bindkey '^[,' copy-earlier-word

and you have \e, to copy the previous word from the *current* command-line, and numeric prefices upon that, and the ability to mess around with long paths gets much easier.

Comment by syscomet 52 weeks and 4 days ago

You can also use $_ in BASH. Good for scripts. :)

Comment by somaddict 26 weeks and 6 days ago

works on my machine, running Gnome 2 on Debian.

Comment by sandcurves 22 weeks and 5 days ago

Your point of view

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