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A word designator indicates which word or words of a given command line are to be included in a history reference. A ‘:’ usually separates the event specification from the word designator. It may be omitted only if the word designator begins with a ‘^’, ‘$’, ‘*’, ‘-’ or ‘%’. Word designators include:
The first input word (command).
The nth argument.
The first argument. That is, 1.
The last argument.
The word matched by (the most recent) ?str search.
A range of words; x defaults to 0.
All the arguments, or a null value if there are none.
Abbreviates ‘x-$’.
Like ‘x*’ but omitting word $.
Note that a ‘%’ word designator works only when used in one of ‘!%’, ‘!:%’ or ‘!?str?:%’, and only when used after a !? expansion (possibly in an earlier command). Anything else results in an error, although the error may not be the most obvious one.