Return to csh history idioms (idea)

Even before the interactive command line editor of tcsh (and other unofficial versions of csh and zsh and bash and others) existed, csh had command line editing based on a line editor paradigm. This facility still exists today in almost all of the "modern" shells, and is worth learning. It's often a lot faster to type in a correction or modification to a command than to edit it appropriately!

Here I'll try to summarise some of the idioms I commonly use.

    !!
    As N-wing already noded, this just expands to the last command.
    !abc
    Expands to the last command starting with "abc".
    !123
    Expands to command #123 in the history list.
    !abc:4
    Expands to word 4 of the last command starting with "abc". Words are counted from , so !abc:0 is that line's command, and !abc:3 is its third parameter.
    !!:$ or !$
    Expands to the last word of the last command. Often used in idioms like this: 
       % some_tricky_command prm1 prm2 ... > /long/path/to/output
   % grep 'regexp' !$
   % more !$
    !abc:s/pattern/replacement
    Expands to the last command starting with "abc", with the first occurrence of pattern replaced by replacement. pattern is unfortunately not a regexp.
    ^wrong^right
    Short for !:s/wrong/right.
    !abc:gs/pattern/replacement
    Expands to the last command starting with "abc", with all occurrences of pattern replaced by replacement.

Teach your fingers to type these in automatically. It's a great way to semi-automate many tedious command-line tasks.

Existing:

Non-Existing: