grep “thing I want” !$

This is a trick I’ve used lots when wanting to perform a non-piping operation on a command I’ve ‘cat’ed (eg ‘rm -v !$’)

I’d never criticise anyone for “useless” use of ‘cat’ though. If the fork() overhead was really that critical then it wouldn’t be a shell command to begin with.

1. When opening a file that is already open in another editor in another terminal, Vim gives me many options, but it doesn't give me the option to kill the other process (or ask that process to save its buffer and exit).

2. My .vimrc should really follow me around automatically. Too often I find myself installing a new machine and missing my settings. I don't know how it should be implemented, but this is something that should work. Edit: if SSH can pass the DISPLAY variable around, then it could do the same with (a key to) .vimrc. Once a .vimrc is associated with an account, it will stay there, so if I log into the machine from the console, I should have my .vimrc (this also happens to the .Xauthority file, although less useful). This could also apply to other settings, of course. And it would be even better if my Vim binary followed me around too, but this is perhaps too futuristic.