Modify a command from the bash shell history before using it again?

[caljohnsmith]

I suppose this is almost sort of a trivia question, but is there a way to pull up a previous command from the bash shell history and modify it before using it? Other than doing a copy and paste I mean. For instance, if I do:

history

And I see that command number 423 is:

423  cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

So if I want to re-execute that command I could simply do:

!423

But what if I want to modify that command slightly before executing it? Is there an easy way of doing that? Just curious.

[y-lee]

May not be what you are looking for but I edit the history file in a word processor. Open nautilus and hit ctrl-H to show hidden files and look for .bash_history. Open it in gedit or whatever editor you like to use and edit. You will probably have to restart the terminal for the changes to take effect, tho i might be wrong.

[olejorgen]

Uh. press up (the arrow keys) of ctrl+p revious / ctrl+n ext if you use standard (emacs) bindings. or esc k/j if you use vi bindings

EDIT: Ah, I think I missunderstood what you wanted
EDIT2: If you use vi bindings you could do "esc 432k" maybe emacs have something similar

[olejorgen]

Or you could use zsh and do !423<tab>

[y-lee]

see also Bash History. The fc command mentioned there may help.