Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#1

Post by yesenadam » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

What are the best, most useful aliases or functions etc for bash that you've collected or written? Or bash scripts. Please give explanation/usage if necessary. Ones you actually use often. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#2

Post by bckmn » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

I use my git aliases dozens of times each day, especially the last few that pop open relevant repository webpages: https://github.com/andjosh/dotfiles/blob/master/.gitconfig#L...

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#3

Post by exogen » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

Since I'm working in git repos the majority of the time, I type these hundreds of times per day:

    alias s="git status"
    alias d="git diff"

I prefer looking at this stuff in a terminal rather than an IDE. Reducing them to a single character just feels so good. Note: not a git alias like "git s", literally just the single character "s" in Bash itself.

And coming in third:

    alias ..="cd .."

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#4

Post by pizza » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

    alias v="nvim"

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#5

Post by cgijoe » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

My most commonly used thing in my profile is this combination git tag, push, and npm publish using the current version in my package.json file:

   	np() {
		PACKAGE_VERSION=$(node -p -e "require('./package.json').version")
		SHORTVER="v$PACKAGE_VERSION"
		LONGVER="Version $PACKAGE_VERSION"
		echo $LONGVER
		git tag -a "$SHORTVER" -m "$LONGVER" && git push --tags && npm publish
	}

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#6

Post by fortenforge » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

  alias search='set -f;search';search() { find . ${2:+-name "$2"} -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep --color=auto "$1"; }

Recursively searches the files in the current directory for string matches. You can optionally provide a second glob argument to restrict what files to search. This is basically a dumber version of ack-grep, but I wrote it before I learned about ack.

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#7

Post by VelNZ » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

  alias ll='ls -l'

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#8

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#9

Post by yesenadam » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

I have 'usb' aliased as my main USB's directory.

Making 'cd' more explicit:

  cd ( ) {
  builtin cd "$@"
  echo "$OLDPWD -> $PWD"
  }

Up directory

  alias ..='cd ../'

This one I use to find bits in my favourite books/essays, which I have in folders in /books, under e.g. /books/Shakespeare/Macbeth, then search with 'book to be or' etc.

  book () {
  # Find occurrences of words in texts. Put folders in ~/books, or soft links (ln -s) 
  # Displays only complete words found, not parts of words.
  GREP_COLOR=red
  grep -r -n -i --word-regexp --color -C 1 "$*" ./books/
  echo `grep -r -i "$*" ./books/ | wc -l` occurrences of \"$*\" found, `grep -i -r --word-regexp "$*" ./books/ | wc -l` as a whole word.
  }

'dlm' downloads mp4 file from URL in clipboard

  #!/bin/bash
  #dlm - download mp4 from clipboard URL. usage: 'dlm myfile' downloads myfile.mp4
  #with resume after 5 secs until finish.
  fname=$(pbpaste)
  echo "Download $fname as $1.mp4 : "
  until curl -C - -kLo $1.mp4 "$fname"
  do
        sleep 5
  done

Re: Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?

#10

Post by pgtan » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

alias lcoate=locate

alias ll="ls -l"

alias ..="cd .."

alias ...="cd ../.."

alias mdd='mkdir $(date -I)'

alias cdd='cd $(date -I)'

alias xt="xtermset -T "

alias dtail="dmesg|tail"