Use output from previous commands without repeating them

Question

If I enter a command that runs for a long time or produce a lot of output, I often want to process that output in some way, but I don't want to re-run the command. For example, I might run

$ command
$ command | grep foo
$ command | grep foo | sort | uniq

But if command takes a long time, this is tedious to re-run. Is there a way to have bash (or any other shell) save the output of the last command, similar to the Python REPL's _?. I am aware of tee, but I would rather have my shell do this automatically without having to use tee all the time.

I am also aware I could store the output of a command, but again, I would like my shell to do this automatically, so I don't have to think about storing the command and I can just use my shell normally, and process the previous output when I want to.

No it doesn't remember the output of the previous command. It only gets sent to one place that you can decide or the default is stdout. — 123
– 123, Commented Jul 15, 2015 at 13:40

arco444 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-15 13:37:03Z

1

You can store the output into a variable:

output=$(command)
echo $output | grep foo
echo $output | grep foo | sort | uniq

answered Jul 15, 2015 at 13:37

arco444

23k12 gold badges66 silver badges67 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Use output from previous commands without repeating them

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related