Matt wants to import a manually created EC2 instance into terraform so that he can manage the EC2 instance through terraform going forward. He has written the configuration file of the EC2 instance…

Using an equals sign between the resource address and instance ID is not valid syntax for terraform import - the two arguments must be separated by a space, not an assignment operator.

Providing only the instance ID without a resource address is invalid because Terraform cannot determine which configuration block to associate with the imported resource.

Joining the resource name and instance ID with a dot creates a malformed single argument - the instance ID must be a separate positional argument following the resource address.

The command terraform import aws_instance.matt_ec2 i-0260835eb7e9bd40 uses the correct syntax: the resource address (type.name) is the first argument and the real-world resource ID is the second argument separated by a space. Terraform writes the imported resource into the state file and associates it with the configuration block named matt_ec2.