Terminal Tip: Effective Use of the Command History

No more “pressing up arrow 20 times”!

You recently ran a long shell command that you need to run again now? Like some long git merge origin/very-long-branch-name-that-i-dont-want-to-look-up-again or mvn -D test -lots-of-more-options?

Solution: Make effective use of the command history!

Step 1: Run the history command to list/enumerate your recently run commands.

Step 2: Run the desired command with (for example) !126, using the number shown in the output from step 1.

To run the last command again, simply run !!.

These little things can not only save time, I mainly find that they save energy and focus by reducing context switches.

(This should work in bash and most similar shells like zsh, including Git Bash on Windows.)