Question

If I have just entered the following command in Bash:

echo foo

I can change foo to bar by typing:

^foo^bar

Which results in the following command being executed:

echo bar

Now if I enter:

echo foo foo

Is there a way to change both instances of foo to bar just by using the caret (^) operator?

Additionally, are there man pages for shell operators like ^? man ^ results in “No manual entry for ^”.

Answer 1

That particular feature is called quick substitution; its documentation can be found in the Event Designators section of the Bash Manual. You can’t do what you want with quick substitution; you’ll have to resort to something slightly more verbose:

!!:gs/foo/bar/