So this may be a little basic, but I find myself using these two shortcuts quite a bit while at the shell.
If you ever find yourself wanting to “reuse” the last argument in a command – for example, here I move a file from one location into /var/tmp and I want to “cd” into /var/tmp without having to type it, use the shell variable !$…
locutus:~ (svoboda)> dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/blah bs=1024000 count=1 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 1024000 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.0109023 s, 93.9 MB/s
locutus:~ (svoboda)> mv /tmp/blah /var/tmp
locutus:~ (svoboda)> cd !$ cd /var/tmp
locutus:/var/tmp (svoboda)> pwd /var/tmp
If you wanted to “preface” your last command, you can throw anything you want into the shell followed by the !! shell shortcut. locutus:/var/tmp (svoboda)> “Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance” -bash: Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance: command not found
locutus:/var/tmp (svoboda)> echo !! echo “Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance” Armin van Buuren’s a State of Trance
The first line mearly “shows” what is being executed, with the second line executing the actual command. Not rocket science, but whatever helps on saving keystrokes!