If you have an actual home key. If it's ctrl+a or (IIRC, AFK) ctrl+← then we're even.

And if we track hand movements then pressing ! twice may be faster than moving to another key.

But yeah, it's not at all clear that sudo !! is faster like you'd expect it to be.

Actually, after kinematic analysis of the required fingertip trajectories upheaves both of these arguments. If you calculate the aggregate spatial displacement across a standard 2D Euclidean plane for both input strings, the former macro sequence yields a significantly lower metric footprint than the latter.

For the sake of empirical demonstration, we can map this across a standard ANSI 100% layout using a normalized key pitch constraint where 1 U = 19.05 mm. By establishing a Home Row Idle-State Matrix as our behavioral anchor and tracking independent multi-finger vectors using the standard Pythagorean metric tensor—calculating the straight-line distance d = sqrt( delta_x^2 + delta_y^2 ) between consecutive keystroke coordinates—we arrive at the following quantitative breakdown:

Macro Sequence 1: sudo [shift] !! [enter]

• Single-Handed Vector String: 40.878 U
  • Net Linear Displacement: 778.7 mm
• Dual-Handed Touch-Typing Matrix: 8.424 U
  • Net Linear Displacement: 160.5 mm

Macro Sequence 2: [up] [home] sudo [space] [enter]

• Single-Handed Vector String: 40.989 U
  • Net Linear Displacement: 780.8 mm
• Dual-Handed Touch-Typing Matrix: 21.728 U
  • Net Linear Displacement: 413.9 mm

tl;dr

Fewer keystrokes != less work. Even though typing !! looks like more work, it isn't because your finger travel distance is significantly shorter when executing those keys using two-handed touch typing on a standard ANSI QWERTY keyboard.

I don't dabble in black magic. /j

It's actually pretty neat.

Screen must have been written by someone who wasn't familiar with the shell. It's the only logical explanation.

Good

Only worth installing if it is 🔥🔥🔥blazing⚡⚡⚡fast

I know what you meant (I have one for fish as well), but I chucked because you looked very enthusiastic about it!

The fish function for !! is super useful though

echo $SHELL

... are you not aware of Alt+S?!

I've been using this plugin https://github.com/oh-my-fish/plugin-bang-bang fish also allows going through previous arguments with alt+up

Does your keyboard not have a home key?

I've used it for so many years that it's not an issue anymore. I remember using !! a lot but it was literally just for sudo. Now i either write what I need and do up or write what I need and then press alt+s, which seems even more intuitive now.

Just to confirm: I tried this, it works.

!! Gets replaced by whatever was run before the alias command

Fish

I figured it out, at least in Linux Mint:

1. Install Keysharp (which includes installing Microsoft's .NET 10 Runtime, but not SDK!)
2. Put this in a .ks folder:

!s::{ ; Press Alt+S to use sudo on the previous Terminal line
    KeyWait 's'
    If WinActive('ahk_exe gnome-terminal-server')
        Send 'sudo {!}{!}{Enter}'
}

Set it as a Startup Program with the command keysharp "(filepath)/(filename).ks" and it'll always be ready to go!

It works.

Same reason there's a ScrollLock key on keyboards. Didn't always have scrollbars and if the application prints more than you can read, you want to pause that...

Short answer, terminals are built on the same technology as physical terminals from the 60s and 70s when controlling the flow of data from the server was a more useful feature.

It's part of the terminal emulator flow control

Seem to be a fish shell thing.

I tested on my good ole trusty bash and got nothing so I went searching.

EDIT: Clarification : alt+s seems to be a fish shell thing.

Ya I haven't tried alt s. Never heard of it before either.

Adding to this, if you notice numbers next to your previous commands when you run history, you can do ! and it will rerun that command. Probably the second cool shell trick I learned back in the olden days or yore (mid-90s?) after ⬆️

I assume if you are silly enough to type in rm -rf /etc, then you are silly enough to type in your password 😅