Question

In bash, I know of 3 “args from previous command” shortcuts. They are:

1. !^ → first arg, spaces preserved;
2. $_ → last arg, spaces not preserved;
3. !* → all args, spaces preserved;

So are there any more arg vars/shortcuts like that? 🙂

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the $_ is useful when I call a file with one command, that’s say in a different [long named] directory, then want to call it again in my next command [i.e. $ stat a\ b\ c/sub/folder/example.txt; mv $_ . ], except when there are spaces in it, it does not work.

Why doesn’t $_ preserve spaces? To see what I mean type this:

$ echo "1" "One String Quoted"; for i in $_; do echo \"$i\"; done
and compare with

$ echo 1 2 "3 4 5"; then press enter then: $ for i in !*; do echo \"$i\" done;

Can you also explain why you have to press enter ^ then do the “for” loop in order for !* to work? [And why the $_ works without having to press enter (AKA, you can use “;” to combine the commands)]

Answer 1

$ does variable expansion while ! is history expansion. For ! to access the arguments you must have added the command to the bash history, which happens on execution / when pressing enter.