[Chapter 11] 11.5 My Favorite Is ^^
Author: Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly & Mike Loukides
Date: 1998-08-04T21:36:06Z

#

| Chapter 11 The Lessons of History |

## 11.5 My Favorite Is ^^

Well, maybe it's not my favorite, but it's probably the history substitution I use most often. It's especially handy if you have fumble-fingers on a strange keyboard:

>     % cat myflie
>     cat: myflie: No such file or directory
>     % ^li^il
>     cat myfile

Obviously, this doesn't save much typing for a short command, but it can sure be handy with a long one. I also use `^^` with `:p` (11.10) to recall an earlier command so I can change it. For example:

>     % !m:p
>     more gobbledygook.c
>     % ^k^k2
>     more gobbledygook2.c

The point is sometimes not to save typing, but to save the effort of remembering. For example, I want to print the file I looked at earlier, but don't remember the exact name...

[My keyboard can repeat characters when I'm not expecting it. I use a single `^` to delete extra characters. For example:

>     % lpr sources/aproggg.c
>     lpr: sources/aproggg.c: no such file or directory
>     % ^gg
>     lpr sources/aprog.c

You could type `^gg^`, but the second caret isn't required. With a single caret, you don't type a replacement string - just the string to delete. -JP]

- TOR

11.4 My Favorite Is !:n* |  | 11.6 Using !$ for Safety with Wildcards