After executing a command with multiple arguments like cp ./temp/test.sh ~/prog/ifdown.sh you can paste any argument of the previous command to the console, like ls -l ALT+1+. is equivalent to ls -l ./temp/test.sh ALT+0+. stands for command itself ('ls' in this case) Simple ALT+. cycles through last arguments of previous commands.

Bash's history expansion character, "!", has many features, including "!:" for choosing a specific argument (or range of arguments) from the history. The gist is any number after !: is the number of the argument you want, with !:1 being the first argument and !:0 being the command. See the sample output for a few examples. For full details search for "^HISTORY EXPANSION" in the bash(1) man page.    Note that this version improves on the previous function in that it handles arguments that include whitespace correctly. Show Sample Output

if you want to move with command mv large list of files than you would get following error /bin/mv: Argument list too long alternavite with exec: find /source/directory -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name '*' -exec mv {} /target/directory \; Show Sample Output

A really fun vim oneliner for auto documenting your option's parsing in your script. # print the text embeded in the case that parse options from command line. # the block is matched with the marker 'CommandParse' in comment, until 'esac' extract_cmdl_options() { # use vim for parsing: # 1st grep the case block and copy in register @p + unindent in the buffer of the file itself # 2nd filter lines which start with --opt or +opt and keep comment on hte following lines until an empty line # 3rd discard changes in the buffer and quit vim -n -es -c 'g/# CommandParse/+2,/^\s\+esac/-1 d p | % d | put p | % -c 'g/^\([-+]\+[^)]\+\))/,/^\(\s\+[^- \t#]\|^$\)/-1 p' \ -c 'q!' $0 } example code:http://snipplr.com/view/25059/display-embeded-comments-for-every-opt-usefull-for-auto-documenting-your-script/ Show Sample Output

If Argument $1 is supplied, assign it to variable. Otherwise continue on.

This gets the Nth argument in the last line of your history file. This is useful where history is being written after each command, and you want to use arguments from the previous command in the current command, such as when doing copies/moving directories etc. I wrote this after getting irritated with having to continually type in long paths/arguments. You could also use $_ if all you want is the last argument. Show Sample Output

This is a alternate command I like to use instead of TOP or HTOP to see what are the processes which are taking up the most memory on a system. It shows the username, process ID, CPU usage, Memory usage, thread ID, Number of threads associated with parent process, Resident Set Size, Virtual Memory Size, start time of the process, and command arguments. Then it's sorted by memory and showing the top 10 with head. This of course can be changed to suit you needs. I have a small system which is why Firefox is taking so much resources. Show Sample Output