Cryptic but consistent

Suppose you’ve never worked at the command line and you’re reading a book about the bash shell. You read that !$ is a shortcut to refer to the last word of the previous command. That little fact will almost certainly not stick in your head for a couple reasons. First, you probably see no need for such a shortcut. Second, the syntax seems completely arbitrary. But then after you use the command line a while, you might begin to notice a pattern. You often have to run a pair of commands with the same last argument, such as when you make a directory then navigate into it. mkdir /some/long/path/name cd /some/long/path/name Maybe someone sees you typing this and offers a helpful suggestion: you can type !$ to repeat the last part of the previous command. mkdir /some/long/path/name cd !$ Once you learn this, you’ll see uses for it regularly. Sorta like when you buy a green Toyota Corolla and suddenly become aware how many green Toyota Corollas there are out there. So then you start to use…