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OS X Command Line Utilities

mitchchn.me

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Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#201

Post by baldfat »

makecheck wrote: post #200
baldfat wrote: post #159

Non-case sensitive really bothers me with OS X

This is not actually an OS limitation, it is a default filesystem choice. The Mac supports multiple types of filesystems, including case-sensitive ones. Having said that, I wouldn't reformat your boot drive to be case-sensitive because this isn't a common configuration and I'd expect 3rd-party apps to have problems. What you can do is use Disk Utility to create a case-sensitive file system on a disk image, which give…

Thank you I didn't know this. Then I will again asked why Apple is STILL on HFS+? If they actually moved to ZFS or any modern file format it really would help the developers world. Just seems that this is such a obvious need to be fixed that doesn't get any concern form Apple and most users/developers.

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#202

Post by makecheck »

baldfat wrote: post #201
makecheck wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not actually an OS limitation, it is a default filesystem choice. The Mac supports multiple types of filesystems, including case-sensitive ones. Having said that, I wouldn't reformat your boot drive to be case-sensitive because this isn't a common configuration and I'd expect 3rd-party apps to have problems. What you can do is use Disk Utility to create a case-sensitive file system on a disk image, which give…

Thank you I didn't know this. Then I will again asked why Apple is STILL on HFS+? If they actually moved to ZFS or any modern file format it really would help the developers world. Just seems that this is such a obvious need to be fixed that doesn't get any concern form Apple and most users/developers.

I'm not sure if there is an official explanation but a pretty good analysis of it is in John Siracusa's review of OS X 10.7 (Lion):

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/12

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/13

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#203

Post by PhasmaFelis »

nemothekid wrote: post #177
mrspeaker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a metric I use to know when it's time to change jobs: if I can't trust the people around me not to mess with my computer (or there's too many people to trust the environment) then it's time to move on.

This seems like an insane metric. For any large enough organization that is difficult to identify who actually works for $company and who is there on "business" - and given that its rare for every developer to have a locked door, you can easily have a situation where a "guest" (maybe a software vendor, or partner, or friend of coworker) is on their way to the bathroom and decides to poke around on your machine. Barri…

> This seems like an insane metric. For any large enough organization that is difficult to identify who actually works for $company and who is there on "business" - and given that its rare for every developer to have a locked door, you can easily have a situation where a "guest" (maybe a software vendor, or partner, or friend of coworker) is on their way to the bathroom and decides to poke around on your machine.

This is like bricking up all your windows against thieves when you live in sleepy, low-crime suburbia.

Site security needs to have a balance between paranoia and practicality. For public-facing code, history has shown us that it's impossible to be too paranoid. If you work in national security, or your industry is known to be a target for industrial espionage, then certainly strong precautions are in order.

But if you're just building social media sites or whatever, and you're firing people because they failed to stand ever vigilant against the possibility that Bob the visiting vendor rep might stalk the corridors waiting for you to take a bathroom break so he can rifle through your code for exploits to sell to teh haxxorz, you are being absurd.

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#204

Post by pimlottc »

gh02t wrote: post #125
pimlottc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having discovered the usefulness of pbcopy/pbpaste on OSX, I'm simply amazed that the equivalent X utilities are not included by default on every major Linux distribution.

Different philosophy, partly motivated by the consideration that with a package manager the barrier to installing it really low. Personally I prefer to have as little installed as possible in the base system so that I can pick and choose what I want on top. Metapackages that install a large selection of stuff or distros that ship a ton of stuff by default drive me crazy. I don't mind it so much on a Mac as that's kin…

I guess I should say I'm more surprised that something like xsel or xclip is not part of the standard x11-utils or what have you.

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#205

Post by bsagert »

Poiesis wrote: post #121
zwily wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in the minority then... My original comment has been downvoted quite a bit. It's strange to me that people think this is okay. If someone is willing to use that power for a prank, it seems to me more likely that they'll use it for... whatever. I like a good prank. Leave your screen unlocked? You deserve the abuse you get. :) But accessing my laptop in this way is just creepy.

Count me on your side (former admin--windows, alas). It always seemed to me to be kind of a bullying thing to do when the mark has less privileges as you. Seems like if they can't retaliate in kind, it's just not as fun. I'm sure there are people who have widely varying views on this, though.

> former admin--windows, alas.

Honest question, why the need to apologize for being a former Windows admin?

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#206

Post by odbol »

dang wrote: post #93
scrollaway wrote: post #6

What's with all the buzzfeed-level headlines making HN frontpage the past few days? Not to say this isn't a useful list (for OSX users that is), but I can't possibly be the only one weirded out by this.

> buzzfeed-level headlines making HN frontpage the past few days This is most likely random fluctuation a.k.a. sample bias, but if you know of any that didn't get corrected, please email them to us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can figure out why. People post such titles all the time but we change them systematically. For example, we changed this one shortly after your comment. Normally we'd have replied to your commen…

Oh hi there! I'll probably get banned/downvoted for saying this, but what's up with the lazy web design? Ever think people might want to use your site on mobile? And have it be readable/be able to click upvote buttons?

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#207

Post by odbol »

pjmlp wrote: post #57
jmount wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without something like Homebrew you don't get any current Unix tools (OSX shell is way out of date) or anyway to systematically update them. This is a big benefit that far outweighs any perceived benefit dropping bundles into /Applications. And you get some attempt at installation of dependencies.

What are current UNIX tools? OS X supports what is expected from a POSIX compliant OS. I guess you mean BSD and GNU extensions to POSIX.

hahahaha I see you've never tried to use rsync on a Mac. Some (documented) command line options just DON'T work. They're in the manpage, but they don't do anything. There's lots of other little gotchas in other utils as well, especially when coming from Linux.

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#208

Post by odbol »

jmount wrote: post #37

A nice complement to the command line "open" command is adding a shell launcher to OSX finder. I have some instructions how to do this here: http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2012/05/enhance-osx-finder/

Oh wow I've been looking EVERYWHERE for that. Thanks so much!

Also, a tip: an easier way to change the icon of any app/folder/anything:

1. Right click it -> Get Info.

2. Drag an app that has the icon you want onto the icon in top-left of the Info window. (e.g. drag the Terminal.app into the Info window and drop it on the icon: that script will now have the same icon as the Terminal.)

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#209

Post by gh02t »

pimlottc wrote: post #204
gh02t wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different philosophy, partly motivated by the consideration that with a package manager the barrier to installing it really low. Personally I prefer to have as little installed as possible in the base system so that I can pick and choose what I want on top. Metapackages that install a large selection of stuff or distros that ship a ton of stuff by default drive me crazy. I don't mind it so much on a Mac as that's kin…

I guess I should say I'm more surprised that something like xsel or xclip is not part of the standard x11-utils or what have you.

Oh yeah, I agree. Pretty sure the reason xsel or xclip isn't in x11-utils is that they are not part of the Xorg project. Obviously something with equivalent functionality should be there, but I guess the Xorg folks overlooked it and packagers don't want to stick in random stuff.

Re: OS X Command Line Utilities

#210

Post by senderista »

skygazer wrote: post #62
mirkules wrote: post #20

Great list, some really useful commands. One question: What's wrong with "locate"? It is really fast because the file system contents are indexed. As long as you understand that it's not going to pick up the latest new files without running "updatedb" (sudo/usr/libexec/locate.updatedb" in os x) first, it's much better than find if you're doing a quick search. However, I didn't know spotlight has a CLI. Cool.

I prefer mlocate to locate, as it rebuilds the index in a flash by diffing and by paying attention to modification dates when traversing, so you can run its updatedb more frequently without a noticable penalty. That said, mdfind is terrific -- it's index is, as you suggested, always upto date, and it doesn't just index file names, but also content.

I like to use mdfind for ack-style search over my whole system: https://gist.github.com/senderista/1246300
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