Bash - I forgot sudo

Published on Thursday, 06 October 2016

If you’re new to running Bash on Windows like me chances are you’ll type some huge long command only to be presented with a nice message telling you that permission was denied and then you realise you forgot “sudo”. Rather than typing the whole thing again prefixing with sudo this handy alias will save you a few keystrokes:

  • Edit bashrc (vi .bashrc)
  • Add the alias “ffs='sudo $(history -p !!)'”
  • Restart/open bash console

And in case you struggle with vi here is a handy cheat sheet.