9

I want to be able to run a command, it fails cause it doesn't have proper permissions. Then I can write "please" to sudo the command I just ran.

Here's what I want to do in the terminal:

$ run command
"you don't have access to do that"
$ please
"ran successfully"

I saw that !! will grab the previous command, so I thought I could use that, but I can't get it to work.

my please.sh shell script looks like this, but I can't get any of these to work. It just says "command not found !!" and prints out the sudo usage.

#!/bin/zsh

#sudo !!
#sudo `!!`
sudo $(!!)
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3
  • Does it work without the script? If you just run sudo !! does it run as expected? I think !! may just be a bash alias, so it may not work in zsh – Chris Wayne Jul 19 '12 at 1:07
  • 3
    AFAIK, history expansion (!! and others) only works in interactive shells and not in scripts. – Thor Jul 19 '12 at 1:16
  • sudo !! in interactive mode almost works as expected. when I pressed enter it would replace !! with the previous command. then i had to press enter again to run it. – jb. Jul 19 '12 at 2:53
6

You cannot use !! in a shell script, as you cannot access the parent shell in a child shell. Though I recommend using sudo !!, if you really want to make a BASH script, you would have to use .bash_history, like so:

#!/bin/bash
sudo `cat $HOME/.bash_history | tail -n1`

It is definitely NOT a perfect solution, but it should do the trick. If you are using ZSH, this will not work, as ZSH does not output to .bash_history (of my knowledge). UPDATE: Here is a version that should work with ZSH:

#!/usr/bin/zsh
. $HOME/.zshrc
sudo `cat \`readlink -f $HISTFILE\` | tail -n1`

Hope this helps!

If you don't understand the script, it simply runs the last command entered in BASH with sudo.

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3
  • ok. I'm using zsh though. is there any equivalent for .bash_history in zsh? – jb. Jul 19 '12 at 2:51
  • Now that I look, yes, there is a version that should work. I haven't tested it yet though. – MiJyn Jul 19 '12 at 23:45
  • Don't read the bash history file directly. Use the fc or history built-ins. By default, the $HISTFILE is not updated until you log out of bash. – Steven K Sep 30 '14 at 22:52
27

Add to your .zshrc:

alias please='sudo $(fc -ln -1)'
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4
  • Works a treat, seems better than above accepted answer for ease of use. – Mitchell Currie Aug 22 '15 at 11:11
  • 2
    For the curious: fc stands for fix command. The documentation is here. – dshepherd Jan 6 '16 at 10:16
  • Thank you! I know this is AskUbuntu, but I used this on OSX to copy my last command to the system clipboard: alias lastcmd="fc -ln -1 | pbcopy" I believe this should (?) work on Ubuntu: alias lastcmd="fc -ln -1 | xclip -selection clipboard. – HellaMad May 18 '16 at 7:00
  • Note that if the previous command you are rerunning contained an alias, you may have to define that alias in .zshenv so that it is available in the subshell. – xdhmoore Sep 17 '20 at 20:44

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