Can I have a shell alias evaluate a history substitution command?
- by Brandon
I'm trying to write an alias for cd !!:1, which takes the 2nd word of the previous command, and changes to the directory of that name. For instance, if I type
rails new_project
cd !!:1
the second line will cd into the "new_project" directory.
Since !!:1 is awkward to type (even though it's short, it requires three SHIFTed keys, on opposite sides of of the keyboard, and then an unSHIFTed version of the key that was typed twice SHIFTed), I want to just type something like
cd-
but since the !!:1 is evaluated on the command line, I (OBVIOUSLY) can't just do
alias cd-=!!:1
or I'd be saving an alias that contained "new_project" hard-coded into it. So I tried
alias cd-='!!:1'
The problem with this is that the !!:1 is NEVER evaluated, and I get a message that no directory named !!:1 exists. How can I make an alias where the history substitution is evaluated AT THE TIME I ISSUE THE ALIAS COMMAND, not when I define the alias, and not never?
(I've tried this in both bash and zsh, and get the same results in both.)
