this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Always amused me that sudo !! is actually more keypresses (at least on keyboards where typing ! requires holding Shift).
You just blew my mind. sudo [space] [shift] !! [enter] (4+1+1+1+1+1) is one keypress longer than β + home + sudo + space + enter (1+1+4+1+1). In your face, universe.
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 tensorβcalculating the straight-line distance d = sqrt( delta_x^2 + delta_y^2 ) between consecutive keystroke coordinatesβwe 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.
Edit: I will forward your thesis to the cat.
My day started out catastrophically bad, resulting in taking a sick day.
Then came you.
I cried and laughed in some sequence and it gave me the energy to get out of bed. Now, I will have breakfast*.
*Loose definition.
bows thank you thank you. Glad about my efforts being well received, and even more so it got you out of bed! Cheers and may your day remain on the up.
If you have an actual home key. If it's ctrl+a or (IIRC, AFK) ctrl+β 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.
But it's faster since your hand move less and you can keep shift pressed
I use zsh with the sudo plugin. Double tap esc and your current or last command will be prefixed with sudo.
I don't dabble in black magic. /j
It's actually pretty neat.
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You can also just do a sudo !! the !! is a shorthand for whatever you tried to run previously.
Was about to say, why would you copy anything when using sudo !! lol
... because I had no idea about this until now. Sweet!
Not all shells support that.
I use fish btw.
I made my own !!
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
I don't even know what I use anymore. My distro seems to keep changing it when I reinstall.
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I learned something new today!
I completely forgot about this one!
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I know alt +. inserts the last argument of previous commands. There must be a good list of alt commands somewhere because they're pretty damn useful.
Top text should maybe say copying by, rather than copying then? Since sudo !! will automatically copy the previous command with sudo in front of it, so there's no manual copying involved
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I used to have an alias 'please' for that.
Wait⦠YOU CAN DO THAT?!
Forgot to mention but only in fish shell.
What is the "fish shell?" Anyway, I'm gonna see if I can actually get this to work in any terminal through an external program...
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Cannot find any reference online. What is this supposed to do? Not at a PC right now.
!! Just puts in your last typed command. So if you typed rm -rf /etc, you wouldn't have permission. But if you typed in sudo !! Right after, then you're really fucked.
Ah I wasn't clear -- those, I knew. It's alt+S I don't know. I'm at my machine now and it doesn't seem to do anything on Pop_OS.
Seem to be a fish shell thing.
I tested on my good ole trusty bash and got nothing so I went searching.
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On my Terminal that just makes it so I can't type anymore, I feel like I'm doing something wrong...
My solution to the problem is CTRL+U, type sudo, CTRL+Y.
Ctrl + S freezes your shell yes. But Alt + S?
Ah indeed, ALT+S does nothing. I must have pressed both before realizing it was frozen.
Need to use the fish shell instead of the others for this to work. (May be a way to enable it in other shells but I'm not sure how)
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