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up vote 4 down vote favorite

I've a not really permissive program to work with. Unfortunately, this program doesn't just allow the following

"command -a -b -c"

or

"command -abc"

So I've to always type the following

command -a && command -b && command -c

I am pretty sure there is more efficient way to type that, but can't figure it out.

share|improve this question
3  
This will totally depend on the command. Please include it in your question. – joepd 9 hours ago
1  
You have many different answers, but I bet you will stick to cmd -a; cmd -b; cmd -c in long run, as all human beings do. – jimmij 8 hours ago
up vote 8 down vote accepted

You could do:

echo -a -b -c | xargs -n 1 command

Or:

xargs -n1 command <<< '-a -b -c'

with some shells.

But beware that it affects the stdin of command.

With zsh:

autoload zargs # best in ~/.zshrc
zargs -n 1 -- -a -b -c -- command

Or simply:

for o (-a -b -c) command $o

None of those would abort if any of the command invocations failed (except if it fails with the 255 exit status).

For that, you'd want:

for o (-a -b -c) command $o || break

That still fails to the $? to the exit status of the failed command invocation). You could change that to:

(){for o (-a -b -c) command $o || return}

But by that time, it's already longer than:

command -a && command -b && command -c
share|improve this answer
    
Thank you Stéphane for this option. The combinaison of !!:0 and xargs did the trick. – Douda 9 hours ago
up vote 9 down vote

You can refer to the first word of the previous command line (command in your case) by history expansion !!:0 and then you can just add necessary arguments to it.

command -a && !!:0 -b && !!:0 -c

For example:

% echo foobar && !!:0 spamegg && !!:0 baz    
echo foobar && echo spamegg && echo baz
foobar
spamegg
baz

Note that, as Stéphane Chazelas has pointed out, this can result in unexpected expansions too.

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1  
Exactly what I needed ! Thank you vey much heemayl – Douda 9 hours ago
2  
!!:0 (in shells that support csh history expansion) will expand to the first word of the previous command-line, not previous command. – Stéphane Chazelas 9 hours ago
    
@StéphaneChazelas clarified.. – heemayl 9 hours ago
    
We don't know what the first word of the previous command-line was. Try to enter uname and then echo foobar && !!:0 spamegg && !!:0 baz, that will expand to echo foobar && uname spamegg && uname baz. – Stéphane Chazelas 9 hours ago
2  
One ! is enough: !:0 but with @StéphaneChazelas points better is use !#:0 where the !# mean The entire command line typed so far. – Costas 8 hours ago
up vote 2 down vote

How about a shell function wrapping a loop?

yourcmd() {
    local arg
    for arg; do
        thing "$arg" || return
    done
}

Where "thing" is the actual command you want to invoke. Then simply 

yourcmd -a -b -c

You can even generalize this to any command:

splitargs() {
    local cmd arg 
    cmd="$1"
    shift
    for arg; do
        "$cmd" "$arg" || return
    done
}

Then

splitargs somecommand -a -b -c
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