I have not got as far as coming up with an "ideology" about this. I include the $ to indicate a shell command, a convention I think most books and manuals follo

I have not got as far as coming up with an "ideology" about this. I include the $ to indicate a shell command, a convention I think most books and manuals follow. I don't find that makes copy/paste harder, at least not enough to matter. On the scale of things I care about this ranks pretty close to the bottom.