Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#31

Post by michaelmior » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #26

* fish - essential prerequisite in order to live in the command line * autojump (aka j) - for changing directories quickly * open - required to interact with the non-cli world, ships by default on macOS and here's one for Windows/WSL: https://github.com/neosmart/open * imgpaste - for pasting screenshots into a PNG or JPEG directly ( https://github.com/neosmart/imgpaste ) * pbpaste - for pasting into the shell (or if…

> tr - lets you deal with line endings, which sed can't

I'm not sure what you mean by "deal with line endings", but sed can operate across multiple lines.

https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/Text-searc...

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#32

Post by michaelmior » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

If I had to pick a single utility, it would be pv[0]. It's very simple, but I find myself using it all the time. Basically you stick it in a pipeline of commands to get a progress bar. The simplest usage is just to replace cat or input redirection with a call to pv. Saves a lot of time when I can quickly find out if the command I wrote is going to take 30 seconds or 30 minutes.

https://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#33

Post by zzo38computer » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

michaelmior wrote: post #31

ComputerGuru wrote: post #26

* fish - essential prerequisite in order to live in the command line * autojump (aka j) - for changing directories quickly * open - required to interact with the non-cli world, ships by default on macOS and here's one for Windows/WSL: https://github.com/neosmart/open * imgpaste - for pasting screenshots into a PNG or JPEG directly ( https://github.com/neosmart/imgpaste ) * pbpaste - for pasting into the shell (or if…

> tr - lets you deal with line endings, which sed can't I'm not sure what you mean by "deal with line endings", but sed can operate across multiple lines. https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/Text-searc...

Maybe is meant you can remove the carriage returns easily, in case you want only the line feed on the end of the line.

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#34

Post by jolmg » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

I guess these are so obvious no one mentioned them, but: ssh, git, zsh, bash, curl, wget, gpg, gzip, xz, btrfs, qemu, pv, tar, diff, comm, column, sort, uniq, sed, bc, tr, od, xxd, tcpdump, tshark, ping, nmap, ip, iw, xdotool, xrdb, grep, pgrep, pkill, lsof, inotifywait, journalctl, systemctl, convert, ed, and probably countless more I'm taking too much for granted to remember.

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#35

Post by ComputerGuru » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

michaelmior wrote: post #31

ComputerGuru wrote: post #26

* fish - essential prerequisite in order to live in the command line * autojump (aka j) - for changing directories quickly * open - required to interact with the non-cli world, ships by default on macOS and here's one for Windows/WSL: https://github.com/neosmart/open * imgpaste - for pasting screenshots into a PNG or JPEG directly ( https://github.com/neosmart/imgpaste ) * pbpaste - for pasting into the shell (or if…

> tr - lets you deal with line endings, which sed can't I'm not sure what you mean by "deal with line endings", but sed can operate across multiple lines. https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/Text-searc...

I mean directly operating on the line ending itself. e.g. remove all lines or replace `\n` with the record separator, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#36

Post by catacombs » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:07 AM UTC

cjoelrun wrote: post #12

Music organizer/player http://beets.io File browser https://github.com/ranger/ranger Emacs - It does anything you want. Emacs If you like vim keys bindings - http://spacemacs.org Terminal multiplexer - Tmux

Another alternative to Emacs with vim keybindings is Doom Emacs. It's superior to Spacemacs imo.

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#37

Post by nodesocket » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

For sysadmin needs:

  - htop (better top)
  - nload (network traffic visualization)
  - nano (I know, but works great for simple editing)
  - curl (http everything tool)
  - telnet/nc (check listening ports)

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#38

Post by densone » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

pine

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#39

Post by ryannevius » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

Sort of on topic...Does anyone know of a good interactive resource for learning some of the tools that are included by default on UNIX systems? RTFM is useful, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?

#40

Post by sndean » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 3:14 AM UTC

My top 4:

     40.2%  ls
     22.8%  cd
     15.6%  python
     3.6%   nano

Since no one's mentioned it yet: I don't necessarily think nano is great, but it's always there and it opens immediately. Almost all small, quick edits I make (where opening VSCode/Emacs/whatever doesn't make sense) are done in nano. Pretty useful.