Meaning/usage of $_ in bash
VirginSnow at vfemail.net
VirginSnow at vfemail.net
Wed Jul 23 16:51:18 EDT 2008
> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:27:09 -0400
> From: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>
> As Thomas Charon hinted at, it appears to start out set to the last
> external command, but then it gets set to the last word of the
> previous command line. I dunno if that's "by design", or just an
> accident of implemenetation.
I think it's more along the lines of an "accident by design". :-) The
_ variable appears to be overloaded... with different meanings in
different circumstances. Qutoing the bash man page:
_ At shell startup, set to the absolute file name of the shell or
shell script being executed as passed in the argument list.
Subsequently, expands to the last argument to the previous com-
mand, after expansion. Also set to the full file name of each
command executed and placed in the environment exported to that
command. When checking mail, this parameter holds the name of
the mail file currently being checked.
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