Ubuntu – Replacing some characters in the previous command

bashcommand linespecial characters

Sometimes, being rushed, it is possible to type some characters wrong in a command-line. If the command is long, the mistake correction may be cumbersome (using arrow keys). So the problem is: how can I replace characters typed wrong in the previous command as quickly as possible?

Best Answer

One character or more can be replaced with zero, one or more characters as follow:

$ some-wrong-long-command
$ ^wrong^correct^
some-correct-long-command

This quick substitution repeat the last command-line from terminal, replacing wrong string with correct string.

Examles:

enter image description here

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get long command lines to wrap to the next line

Make sure all non-printable bytes in your PS1 are contained within \[ \]. Otherwise, bash will count them in the length of the prompt. It uses the length of the prompt to determine when to wrap the line.

For example, here bash counts the prompt as 19 columns wide, while the prompt displayed by the terminal is only 10 columns wide (My prompt written in cyan, and > written in default color):

PS1='\e[36mMy prompt\e[0m>'         # bash count: 19, actual: 10

while here it only counts the prompt as 10 columns wide because it ignores the bytes between the special \[ and \] escapes:

PS1='\[\e[36m\]My prompt\[\e[0m\]>' # bash count: 10, actual: 10

For good practice though, use tput to generate the terminal escapes rather than hard coding them:

cyan=$(tput setaf 6) # \e[36m
reset=$(tput sgr0)   # \e[0m
PS1='\[$cyan\]My prompt\[$reset\]>'

See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/053, and also http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/terminalcodes for more on tput.

Ubuntu – Find and replace while typing command

You probably are interested about bash quick substitution in the last command:

!!:gs/old/new

Example:

$ ls *.txt | grep -e 'foo' >> list_of_text_files_containing_foo.txt
$ !!:gs/foo/bar
ls *.txt | grep -e 'bar' >> list_of_text_files_containing_bar.txt

For more info about bash substitution, read man bash starting from somewhere from the line 3630.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get long command lines to wrap to the next line

Ubuntu – Find and replace while typing command

Related Question