The asterisk * is a glob. Since double-quotes allow variables inside to be dereferenced rather than always quoting everything literally, presumably he was expecting that double-quotes might still allow globs to work rather than causing them to be quoted, when in fact all quotes will quote globs whether single or double. So he was expecting it might print out "a".
>> [...] The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type 'delete $' twice.
Ironically, this did not render the way you intended because HN interpreted the asterisk as an emphasis marker in this line.
It works here:
... type 'delete *$' twice.
because the line is indented and so renders as code, but not here:
> ... type 'delete $' twice.
because the subsequent line has emphasized text*. So the scoping of the asterisks is all screwed up.
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