Last updated on December 10, 2016
In zsh, it is often annoying that we can't easily restore the command we just canceled by Ctrl-C: canceled commands are not recorded into the history file and thus cannot be restored by searching previous commands. To make the restoration possible, zsh provides a variable ZLE_LINE_ABORTED which keeps a record of the last command that was canceled—everything looks so simple. However, for some reasons, such as canceling stuck tab completion, we often push Ctrl-C for more than once—but ZLE_LINE_ABORTED would become empty if Ctrl-C is used on an empty line! Thanks to the great extensibility of zsh, we can solve this issue by tweaking zle-line-init (add the following to your ~/.zshrc):
function zle-line-init {
# Your other zle-line-init configuration ...
# Store the last non-empty aborted line in MY_LINE_ABORTED
if [[ -n $ZLE_LINE_ABORTED ]]; then
MY_LINE_ABORTED="$ZLE_LINE_ABORTED"
fi
# Restore aborted line on the first undo.
if [[ -n $MY_LINE_ABORTED ]]; then
local savebuf="$BUFFER" savecur="$CURSOR"
BUFFER="$MY_LINE_ABORTED"
CURSOR="$#BUFFER"
zle split-undo
BUFFER="$savebuf" CURSOR="$savecur"
fi
}
zle -N zle-line-init- Line 1: Define the
zle-line-initwidget which will be executed every time when the a new command line is ready to take input. - Line 5-7: If
ZLE_LINE_ABORTEDis non-empty, save it toMY_LINE_ABORTED. - Line 10-16: If
MY_LINE_ABORTEDis non-empty, the initial undo will restore the contents inMY_LINE_ABORTED. Also seeman zshzlefor an explanation ofsplit-undo. - Line 18: Install the widget
zle-line-init.
Now type any command and push Ctrl-C twice and undo (bound to Ctrl-/ by default): your canceled command is back!
Note that if you use zsh-autosuggestions this code snippet somehow breaks it. Adding _zsh_autosuggest_widget_clear before the end of zle-line-init would fix it.