How do you recall the last (n-th?) passed argument of the previous command you used with bash?

Often times I issue different commands on the same file. For example:

$ youtube-dl aB54c4p0eo #I made this video id up on the spot
$ mv aB54c4p0eo.flv kittens.flv
$ vlc kittens.flv
$ rm kittens.flv

Is there a way to reuse arguments from the previous command in the current so that I don’t have to rewrite it?

Answers:

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Method 1

alt-. is certainly nice, but if you happen to already know which numbered argument you want, you can be faster: !:n is the nth argument of the previous command.

It’s often helpful to combine this with magic space. To enable that, put in your .inputrc Space: magic-space. With that enabled, when you type space after !:2, it will be immediately expanded to its value instead of waiting for you to hit enter. Saves you from accidentally grabbing the wrong argument.

Method 2

In bash you can use the shortcut Alt + ..
Hitting it once, will give you the last argument. Hitting it more will cycle through your last arguments.

Method 3

In bash, the designator for the “last word on previous command line” is !!$ :

$ echo hello world
hello world
$ echo goodbye !!$
echo goodbye world # this is bash echoing actual cmd line before execution
goodbye world

You can also use the “caret syntax” to replace the initial part of the command line; this comes handy if you want to execute several commands on the same file:

file file.dat
^file^ls -l^ #gives `ls -l file.dat`
^ls -l^stat # gives `stat file.dat`

There are many more possibilities; see “History substitution” in the bash(1) man page for details.

Method 4

In bash, you can also use $_ for the last command line argument of the last command you typed:

$ youtube-dl aB54c4p0eo #I made this video id up on the spot
$ mv aB54c4p0eo.flv kittens.flv
$ vlc kittens.flv
$ rm kittens.flv

becomes:

$ youtube-dl aB54c4p0eo #I made this video id up on the spot
$ mv $_ kittens.flv
$ vlc $_
$ rm $_

Method 5

One relatively slow way is recalling the previous command with ↑ and replacing the previous command with the newer one.

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