Command expansions based on the history like !!

[meltinglava]

Feature request:
Implement bang bang: sudo !!

[sophiajt]

Can you talk a bit more about this feature and how it will work with nu?

[meltinglava]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15137461/what-is-sudo-bang-bang

Bang bang is a placeholder for the last command typed. Mostly used to prepend sudo in front of the last command.

[wycats]

What if we made sudo with no arguments have this behavior?

[meltinglava]

What if we made sudo with no arguments have this behavior?

Would say that we do bought. Bang bang has been around for a long time.

Although if we add strict aliases (aka aliases that cant be added on to) so you can make an strict alias sudo be equal to sudo !! If that is a consideration we would only have to implement bang bang. Also bang bang have more than a few use cases where you would not use sudo.

Regardless i say its not an alternative, more an addition.

[wycats]

Are there common use-cases for !! other than "whoops! forgot sudo!"?

[meltinglava]

Are there common use-cases for !! other than "whoops! forgot sudo!"?

Well its just a placeholder for the last command typed. We are humans and make mistakes.

I just found it strange working in a linux shell that does not have the option. bash and zsh have them by default, and fish has an extention for it.

[zcdunn]

!! is useful for jumping back into an editor or ssh session when I've exited before finishing something. And !! is only one of the standard history commands that standard shells have. There are some other useful commands. !v runs the last command that starts with v. So i might have a session like this:

vim -O multiple source files # opens the listed files in vertical splits, side by side
# Do some editing and exit vim
mix build # or `make` or `cargo build`
!v # to reopen vim with the same files and same splits

I use this one all the time. There are a few more commands that are explained here: http:https://craig-russell.co.uk/2011/09/28/bang-bang-command-recall-in-linux.html

I reach for the parameters fetching and substitution regularly.

[corbinu]

Just started using nushell a few days ago as my primary driver after playing with it for a few months. I have run into this a couple times. I am fine if the name changes could even be like "lastline" or something but ran into it with sudo and rm when I forgot --recurse

[bltavares]

I would like to share some of the experience with bash and using nushell all time recently.

I also often rely much on !$ due to muscle memory to access the last argument of the last command, such as:

cp folder/wrong/file.so ~/repos/my-build/vendor
# Woops, wrong file
cp folder/correct/file.so !$

git clone [email protected]:nushell/nushell /opt/nushell
cd !$

I would love to have some type of shortcut similar to how zsh and bash have, but with a more memorable alias that would fit the nushell philosophy.

[fdncred]

Totally agree. I'd love to have all the ! commands implemented in NuShell. The ones I've used most are !!, !$, and !<history_index>. Although, this may be a rustyline thing. Not sure.

https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/bash-bang-commands

[brightly-salty]

I use !! in zsh when I want I am developing and want to compile over and over again without typing the command over and over again. I agree that this would be a good feature to implement.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 5 days.

[corbinu]

Just saw this went stale. How about a “papercut” label for this so it stays open but keeps in mind it is a small thing.

I will say I am a daily driver on Nushell at this point. LOVE that it has let me standardize on one shell given I work on Mac, Linux and Windows machines daily (Windows Terminal+nushell is amazing). This feature is the only thing that bites me daily at this point. Thanks for such great work!

[fdncred]

I agree. I was thinking there must be some way to do alias !! = do last command in history especially with this PR #3611 but i haven't looked closely enough to try something out.

[github-actions]

This issue is being marked stale because it has been open for 90 days without activity. If you feel that this is in error, please comment below and we will keep it marked as active.

[brightly-salty]

seems like since #3611 has been merged, it could be implemented now

(also commenting to remove stale label)

[danjenson]

hmmm how would this be implemented using #3611 ? I'm trying ^$"sudo (history | last)", but it's parsing it all as once string and says things like command sudo ls /etc not found

[fdncred]

@danjenson i think it only works with externals like how the PR shows. I can't get it to work with your example either.

[corbinu]

I don't ever mean to be a nag but it has been a year and I am/have been a daily driver with nushell on Mac, Linux and Windows for longer than that. I run into this issue at least every other day. I also still recommend zsh+oh-my-zsh to others due to only this one papercut. I know it seams small and I am a sample size of one, but it is the one thing both annoying me on almost a daily basis and is the only reason I don't tell everybody know to use nushell

[fdncred]

ya, i agree. it's been way too long. sorry about that. @corbinu what are the specific bang commands you're looking for that you would then feel comfortable recommending nushell.

btw - this kind of works ^$"(history | last 1 | get 0)" but it apparently shells out to execute whatever the command is.

[sholderbach]

There might be two ways to go about the bash last command builtins:

1. expand them at evaluation time to fill in the history
2. expand them in the line editor (I think this is also the default behavior in zsh)

Apart from !! for full last command, bash knows !$ for the last token (don't know the exact def) of the last command (e.g. less file.txt then vim !$) and ^search^replace to muck with the last history entry

[hustcer]

@corbinu @meltinglava @elferherrera This issue seems can be closed by this PR: #4735 on the latest main branch?

[johnallsup]

Aside from !!, with e.g. !ls it recalls the last command beginning with ls. If histverify is set, the resulting command is not executed, so you can edit it. You can quickly collect previous commands into a custom function, for example

mkdir -p $DIR/bin $DIR/lib
ls /
myfunc() { !ls ; $mk ; }
will expand to
myfunc() { ls / ; mkdir -p $DIR/bin $DIR/lib ; }

Then e.g. echo !hello
will recall the last command that began with hello, and prepend echo, and with histverify set will allow you to edit the resulting command before execution.

Also each history item is numbered, so if the command you want to recall is 456, then !456 will recall it, and you can e.g. type

!456 ; !458 ; !454

to make a single line executing the three previous commands.

This is very useful once you're used to it. I'm currently trying to find out how to recall lines from the history in nushell.
(e.g. find the last command beginning with nvim).