Short: Fix Typos With A Caret

Today’s article is labeled ‘short’ for a reason, and that reason is that we’re just going to cover how you fix typos with a caret. If you’ve ever made typos in a terminal command, you might be interested in fixing typos with a caret. 

This is labeled ‘Short’ for a reason. I’m trying something new. It will be an intentionally brief article. If there’s any benefit to this, I’ll do more short articles in the future.

If you don’t know, the ^ character is a caret.

If you don’t know, you can fix typos with a caret. It’s not difficult and every single one of us has made typographical errors in a terminal command. That means each and every one of us can benefit from fixing typos with the caret character.

You might also be interested in:

Fix Terminal Command Mistakes

It’s really simple to fix typos with a caret. You’ll see…

Fix Typos With A caret:

This article requires an open terminal. Just press CTRL + ALT + T to open your default terminal emulator.

The syntax is as follows:

That doesn’t make much sense, I’m sure. Let me show you an example. We’ll use the ‘uptime’ command.

Let’s say you made a typo and instead of ‘uptime’ you entered:

This will, of course, throw an error. 

You can use the caret character to fix this. For example:

The output from those commands would look like this:

As you can see, you’re replacing uplime with uptime and using the caret character to do so. This is pretty simple and a great way to save typing time when you make a typo in the terminal – especially if it’s a long command.

It doesn’t need to be the first word or anything like that. Let’s make an example out of the following command:

This is, of course, going to throw an error. So, enter the following:

That will re-run the previous command but will substitute the changed text for the matching text in the erroneous command. It doesn’t matter where the typo is in the previous command. It can be anywhere within the command and doesn’t need to be the first word or anything like that.

Closure:

So, this is a short article. Indeed, it’s called a ‘short’ in the title. If it does well, we may see more of them. If it doesn’t do well, you can expect them to disappear without much of a wrinkle in time. They may catch on. I don’t know. I don’t dare speculate, so your opinions really matter in this case.

I do welcome your opinions on the matter. I also don’t mind typing short articles now and then. As far as I can tell, writing an article takes me about the same amount of time, regardless. So, do let me know your thoughts on the matter. Without you, the reader, this site is pretty pointless. Thus, your thoughts on the matter are of interest to me.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by KGIII

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Author: KGIII

Retired mathematician, residing in the mountains of Maine. I may be old and wise, but I am not infallible. Please point out any errors. And, as always, thanks again for reading.

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