creating a mnemonic for a history command

creating a mnemonic for a history command

[Allomorphy]

Hallowed Zshers

This is one of the most useful incantations for me:
!?foo?:%

It searches in the history for the latest command that contains the
string `foo' and returns the token (or phrase between spaces)  in that
command.

Its a pain to type.
What is an elegant way to set up a mnemonic like say an alias or
something else to type
gimme(foo)
or
!@#foo

Anything that uses less of my limited clock cycles to do this.

🤓


Thanks
E

Re: creating a mnemonic for a history command

[Peter Stephenson]

> On 17/05/2024 12:03 BST Allomorphy <allomorphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is one of the most useful incantations for me:
> !?foo?:%
> 
> It searches in the history for the latest command that contains the
> string `foo' and returns the token (or phrase between spaces)  in that
> command.
> 
> Its a pain to type.
> What is an elegant way to set up a mnemonic like say an alias or
> something else to type
> gimme(foo)
> or
> !@#foo

Your best bet is probably to use an editor function --- not a lot
else happens before the history expansion so it's hard to do in the main
shell.

gimme() {
  LBUFFER='!?'$LBUFFER
  RBUFFER='?:%'$RBUFFER
  zle accept-line
}
zle -N gimme
bindkey '^xg' gimme

Type "foo" or whatever on the command line and then hit ^xg.

Note I have not made any attempt to add sanity checks.

pws

Re: creating a mnemonic for a history command

[Bart Schaefer]

On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 7:01 AM Peter Stephenson
<p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > On 17/05/2024 12:03 BST Allomorphy <allomorphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is one of the most useful incantations for me:
> > !?foo?:%
> >
> > What is an elegant way to set up a mnemonic like say an alias or
> > something else to type
>
> Your best bet is probably to use an editor function [...]
>
> gimme() {
>   LBUFFER='!?'$LBUFFER
>   RBUFFER='?:%'$RBUFFER
>   zle accept-line
> }

This widget not only retrieves the word, but executes it as a command,
which it seems to me unlikely to be the intended effect?  I wonder if
the OP would prefer e.g. complete-word instead of accept-line?

Or perhaps (assuming compinit has run) just escape-slash to invoke
_history-complete-older, if that works well enough?