Make a keybinding to run previous or last shell commands

Solution 1:

Also see https://stackoverflow.com/a/70900927/836330 for how to see a QuickPick of recent terminal commands (in preview as of v1.64) for certain supported shells and OS's.

I came up with this keybinding:

{
  "key": "alt+x",

  "command": "workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence",
      
  "args": { "text": "\u001b[A\u000d" }
},

1. \u001b is an escape sequence to indicate the following characters have special meaning.

2. [A is an up arrow. See, e.g., xterm function keys:

   Cursor Up    | CSI A
   Cursor Down  | CSI B
   Cursor Right | CSI C
   Cursor Left  | CSI D
   

(the "CSI" refers to ESC or \u001b or followed by a [ and stands for "Control Sequence Introducer" (CSI is 0x9b).)

So "CSI A" is \u001b[A which is equal to an up arrow which should cycle your terminal command list to the previous command.

3. \u000d is a return, so the command runs immediately.

Now Alt-x or whatever keybinding you choose will run the last shell command used, focus can be in the editor or the terminal.

For fun I put together this command:

"args": { "text": "\u0012watch\u001b[1;5C" }    

That will send a Ctrl-R to the terminal which searches previous commands.

Then it will search for "watch", and then Ctrl-rightArrow to go to the end of "watch" where you could modify arguments if need be.

Or skip the Ctrl-rightArrow part (\u001b[1;5C) and do a return (\u000d) to run the command that was found anywhere in your history. Obviously, you will need a unique search term for that to work.

[Tested in powershell and git bash. Not tested elsewhere.]