Reusing output from last command in Bash

Question

Is the output of a Bash command stored in any register? E.g. something similar to $? capturing the output instead of the exit status.

I could assign the

Answer 1

Very Simple Solution

One that I've used for years.

Script (add to your .bashrc or .bash_profile)

# capture the output of a command so it can be retrieved with ret
cap () { tee /tmp/capture.out}

# return the output of the most recent command that was captured by cap
ret () { cat /tmp/capture.out }

Usage

$ find . -name 'filename' | cap
/path/to/filename

$ ret
/path/to/filename

I tend to add | cap to the end of all of my commands. This way when I find I want to do text processing on the output of a slow running command I can always retrieve it with res.