In order to save myself from painstakingly typing the same commands over and over again I invested a little time in learning about the Unix history command. One workflow that I have found very useful is the following:
!vi – repeats the last vi command that I typed (apply this to any command)
!! – repeats the last command that I typed
history – prints out the entire history with the associated number for each command
example:
100 – vi info.txt
101 – mv info.txt noinfo.txt
history > myhistory.txt – this will store the contents of my history in a file for later reference
Using the information derived from history I can then do the following:
!100 – this will perform the command vi info.txt
more !:$ – this will take the first argument of the last command and perform a new command on it. So in this instance I will essentially have more info.txt.
Amazing stuff, hunh!