How to wget

GNU wget is an unavoidably common command-line download tool. With the -r flag, wget will basically spindle around the entire internet and download it to your computer. Moreover, without extra parameters given, it will preserve the folder structures it finds on the source locations, so that you stand no chance of finding anything on your computer. If you are like me and you want to download things at a specific location in the source server to a specific folder at your destination, just the files, not the folders, then here is an example how to reduce wget’s quirky behaviour.

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History of commands in the shell

The best command to review most recent commands:

fc -lr

 The above command lists the latest commands in reverse order. It doesn’t list many. To see the entire list, type:

fc -l 1 | less

Simple fc without any arguments picks the latest command in the history, opens it up in your preset command-line editor, and then launches it when the editor closes. There is no stopping the launching, as far as I know, except by emptying the editor and closing it.

To launch an editor according to my liking and with arguments I don’t ordinarily use in that editor, I use:

fc -e "nano -k -U"

Additionally, there’s a way to re-launch commands by means of fc. For this, do first fc -lr to get some commands with their respective history numbers and memorise the number you want to re-launch. Then:

fc -ls #

where # is the number. This re-launches without editor (the argument -s does that). More info:

man fc