> alt-. is great for what it is designed to do, iterating over the previous "last arguments" of your shell history. It's great at doing that, but it is also limited to doing just that one thing.
No, it isn't limited to just that. Alt-0 alt-. will give you the zeroth "argument" (the program), alt-1 alt-. will get you the next (the program's first argument), etc. Negative arguments count back from the end: alt-- 1 alt-. will get you the argument before the last one (note that alt is held for the "-" but not the digit).
When you do use event designators, ctrl-alt-e (or alt-^) is critical. It expands all the ! codes inline to what they refer to, so you can see what you're doing before you hit enter, and as you're constructing the command too.
No, it isn't limited to just that. Alt-0 alt-. will give you the zeroth "argument" (the program), alt-1 alt-. will get you the next (the program's first argument), etc. Negative arguments count back from the end: alt-- 1 alt-. will get you the argument before the last one (note that alt is held for the "-" but not the digit).
When you do use event designators, ctrl-alt-e (or alt-^) is critical. It expands all the ! codes inline to what they refer to, so you can see what you're doing before you hit enter, and as you're constructing the command too.