Many times I found myself typing history
into the terminal and then copy/paste the command I was looking for. But, then I found the below tricks to help repeat that command faster and more efficiently.
Use Control+R
I found this to be the most beneficial for me. It will do a reverse search really fast! Just press enter when you see the command you need to retype.
Repeat the previous command quickly
This is useful if you know you recently typed a command. You can use the following key combinations:
- Use the up arrow to view the previous command and press enter to execute it.
- Type !! and press enter from the command line
- Type !-1 and press enter from the command line.
- Press Control+P will display the previous command, press enter to execute it
Execute a specific command from history
For example, you can display history as usual:
history | more
1 service apache2 restart
2 ifconfig
3 ls
4 cat /etc/hosts
If you want to repeat command #2, you will type !2 as show below:
# !2
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 12:38:33:b7:99:96
inet addr:10.0.0.17 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::1038:33ff:feb7:9996/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:9001 Metric:1
RX packets:586486972 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:539727562 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:363967988525 (363.9 GB) TX bytes:491630839370 (491.6 GB)