Copy, paste, and edit multiline command in bash terminal

Commands with lots of arguments sometimes use slash escaped newlines to make them easier to read on the web. Here is a silly example

echo -n \
"hello" \
"world"

I'm not sure how to paste and edit this "properly"

Pasted into bash you get

$ echo -n \
> "hello" \
> "world"

Now if I navigate with the back arrow key on OSX, I can only edit the line with > "world", not the first two lines. Usually I have to paste into a temp file to fix up a command.

Is there a better way to perform this paste which allows editing any line? bash setting which makes this work in a nicer way?

Solution 1:

When you have such a command on several lines you can, if you're using bash in emacs mode (usually the default one) ctrl+x ctrl+e it will open your favorite editor, as specified in your EDITOR variable.

Or you can type fc, this will open the editor on the last command you've typed, then you can edit it as you want, then feel free to quit, and it will be executed.