At least ctrl-r shows you what command you're about to execute. I often see advice about character sequences in bash that expand to the last command or arguments in the last command, but I have never felt comfortable using them because I can't double-check the command.
I have absolutely no clue what I've done to make it work this way (if anything), but in zsh running a command with !$ (last word from the previous command) I get the opportunity to edit the interpolated version first.
