Event Designators (Bash Reference Manual)

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9.3.1 Event Designators

An event designator is a reference to a command line entry in the history list. Unless the reference is absolute, events are relative to the current position in the history list.

!

Start a history substitution, except when followed by a space, tab, the end of the line, ‘=’ or ‘(’ (when the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin).

!n

Refer to command line n.

!-n

Refer to the command n lines back.

!!

Refer to the previous command. This is a synonym for ‘!-1’.

!string

Refer to the most recent command preceding the current position in the history list starting with string.

!?string[?]

Refer to the most recent command preceding the current position in the history list containing string. The trailing ‘?’ may be omitted if the string is followed immediately by a newline. If string is missing, the string from the most recent search is used; it is an error if there is no previous search string.

^string1^string2^

Quick Substitution. Repeat the last command, replacing string1 with string2. Equivalent to !!:s^string1^string2^.

!#

The entire command line typed so far.