Bash shortcut to get parent of last used parameter - bash

Question

In my workflow I do very usually:
cat this/very/long/filename.txt
cd !$
bash: cd: this/very/long/filename.txt: Not a directory
Which is to be expected :(
And now I recover the last command, remove manually the file part, and repeat the cd, which now works. That is too much typing!
It would be sooo nice if there was a bash shortcut like:
cd !§
Which could give me the parent of the last used parameter. I know !§ does not exist, I just wished it did! Is there something which can satisfy this?

Answer 1

Et voilà. History modifiers come to the rescue!
$ cd !!:$:h
which can be abbreviated to
$ cd !$:h
This command takes the last argument of the previous command, and removes the trailing path name.
In more details:
!! expands to the previous command
:$ expands to the last argument of the previous command
:h takes the header; that is, removes the file name (which is the trailing part of the above last argument)
As an aside,
!!:$:t
does exactly the opposite.
For an in-depth discussion, please refer to the Bash documentation.

Answer 2

This shorter version would also work:
cd !$:h
Details:
!$ is synonymous to !!:$ which presents the last argument of the previous command.
: separates the modifier from the event-word designator.
h is the modifier that removes the trailing file name component.

Answer 3

Building on the answer presented by several other people,
the ideal workflow is to type cd !$:h after the cat this/very/long/filename.txt command. 
This answer, cd !$:h, will still work after cd !$, but,  once you’ve made that mistake,
you can use the even shorter !:h, which repeats the last command (cd this/very/long/filename.txt),
but taking only the head of the last word.
I'm using these little-known shorthands:
!word_designator is equivalent to !!:word_designator
for non-numeric word_designators (e.g., !$ is equivalent to !!:$) and
!:modifier is equivalent to !!:modifier
(e.g., !:h is equivalent to !!:h).

Answer 4

In this case, I usually do: (I have emacs key binding)
cd Alt-dotAlt-b(n times)Ctrl-K
better:
cdAlt-dotALT-Backspace(n times)
note alt-b or ALT-Bs could be pressed multiple times, till you are satisfied with the path.

Answer 5

cat this/very/long/filename.txt
cd !!^:h
cd this/very/long
!! refers to the last command
^ first argument, second word(word designators)
:h remove trailing pathname component, leaving the head(modifers).

Answer 6

Instead of navigating through the history, you can also consider the use of the $_ variable to refer to the last argument of the previous command (see _ under the Special Parameters section of bash(1)).
To further strip the filename component ("everything after, and including, the last slash"), use parameter expansion (Remove matching suffix pattern):
$ cat this/very/long/filename.txt
$ cd ${_%/*}
The last command will be cd this/very/long since /filename.txt got stripped. A difference with history expansion is that this command (cd ${_%/*}) gets added to the history.