Echoing the last command run in Bash?

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Bash has built in features to access the last command executed. But that’s the last whole command (e.g. the whole case command), not individual simple commands like you originally requested.

!:0 = the name of command executed.

!:1 = the first parameter of the previous command

!:4 = the fourth parameter of the previous command

!:* = all of the parameters of the previous command

!^ = the first parameter of the previous command (same as !:1)

!$ = the final parameter of the previous command

!:-3 = all parameters in range 0-3 (inclusive)

!:2-5 = all parameters in range 2-5 (inclusive)

!! = the previous command line

etc.

So, the simplest answer to the question is, in fact:

echo !!

…alternatively:

echo "Last command run was ["!:0"] with arguments ["!:*"]"

Try it yourself!

echo this is a test
echo !!

In a script, history expansion is turned off by default, you need to enable it with

set -o history -o histexpand

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