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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

For an interactive edit I just use <ESC>-. to repeat the last parameter:

    ls foo.txt
    mv <ESC>-. <ESC>-. # and edit

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Yup, readline's yank-last-arg command Alt-. or Alt-_ (see https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Commands-...) is the best off-the-shelf solution that still gives the ability to interactively edit the filename. To minimize the total number of key strokes I would suggest:

  mv foo.txt 
  ↑
  Alt-.

That is: intentionally run mv with only one argument (the command fails but is recorded in the history), Up arrow to recall the last command, and Alt-dot (pastes the last argument).

This is literally replacing an entire shell script with two key strokes (Up, Alt-.)

What version of bash do you use? I can't seem to get this to work with mine. For me, Alt-. gets the last argument of the penultimate command.

  $ echo $BASH_VERSION
  5.0.11(1)-release
  
  $ mv foo.txt
  mv: missing destination file operand after 'foo.txt'
  Try 'mv --help' for more information.

  $ mv foo.txt $BASH_VERSION # Alt-. pasted $BASH_VERSION instead of foo.txt

Is that the same thing as ALT-. ?

Yes. It's also the same as Alt-_

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