Question

For example look at the following line of bash-code

eval `echo "ls *.jpg"`

It lists all jpgs in the current directory. Now I want it to just print the line to the prompt so I can edit it before executing. (Like key-up does for example)

How do I do that?

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The reason for this question comes from a much more usefull alias:

alias ac="history 2 | sed -n '1 s/[ 0-9]*//p' >> ~/.commands; sort -fu ~/.commands > ~/.commandsTmp; mv ~/.commandsTmp ~/.commands"
alias sc='oldIFS=$IFS; IFS=$'\n'; text=(); while read line ; do text=( ${text[@]-} "${line}") ; done < ~/.commands; PS3="Choose command by number: " ; eval `select selection in ${text[@]}; do echo "$selection"; break; done`; IFS=$oldIFS'
alias rc='awk '"'"'{print NR,$0}'"'"' ~/.commands; read -p "Remove number: " number; sed "${number} d" ~/.commands > ~/.commandsTmp; mv ~/.commandsTmp ~/.commands'

Where ac adds or remembers the last typed command, sc shows the available commands and executes them and rc deletes or forgets a command. (You need to touch ~/.commands before it works)

It would be even more usefull if I could edit the output of sc before executing it.

Answer 1

history -s whatever you want

will append “whatever you want” to your bash history. Then a simple up arrow (or !! followed by enter if you have shopt histreedit enabled — I think that’s the option I’m thinking of, not 100% sure), will give you “whatever you want” on the command line, ready to be edited.