Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

Post by Orygin » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #111

piekvorst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of an excerpt from an old Emacs manual: . . . if you forget which commands deal with windows, just type @b[ESC-?]@t[window]@b[ESC]. This weird command is presented with such a benevolent innocence as if it's the simplest thing in the world. I think the better advice for command-line editing would be to set up the mouse.

> This weird command is presented with such a benevolent innocence as if it's the simplest thing in the world. I think it's a question of context and familiarity. To a vim user, like me and, I assume, ahmedfromtunis, their examples do indeed seem simple and natural. Presumably, to an emacs user, the example you quote (if it's quoted literally—I don't use emacs and can't even tell) is just as natural, and assuming som…

Post by bandie91 » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #116

nasretdinov wrote: post #36

I'd advise against using sudo !! though since it adds the command to history and then it's very easy to accidentally trigger, running some undesired command as root without any prior confirmation. IMO pressing up, Ctrl-A and typing "sudo " isn't much longer but saves you from running unknown commands as root by accident

i never found !! useful at all when i can just use up arrow to get the entry i want. it becomes more interesting when you can recall older commands, but then too i prefer search because i want to verify what command i am going to run. and i only use sudo to open a root shell. never to run anything directly. i don't want normal and root commands mixed in the same history. i could keep sudo commands out of the history,…

Post by Cyphus » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

seedie wrote: post #122

nidnogg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once you get tired of fzf and want something better, you reach for https://atuin.sh . Completely transformed all of my workflows

From the atuin.sh website > Sync your shell history to all of your machines I think of my shell history as very machine specific. Can you give some insights on how you benefit from history sync? If you use it.

Post by foobarian » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

seedie wrote: post #122

nidnogg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once you get tired of fzf and want something better, you reach for https://atuin.sh . Completely transformed all of my workflows

From the atuin.sh website > Sync your shell history to all of your machines I think of my shell history as very machine specific. Can you give some insights on how you benefit from history sync? If you use it.

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

xtiansimon wrote: post #68

commandersaki wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a (n)vim user for 20+ years now, but I hate vi-mode in the shell. However if I feel that I need to do a complex command, I just do ctrl-x+e to open up in neovim (with EDITOR=nvim set). I find it a good middle ground.

Huh. I don’t use vi-mode for more than jumping to the beginning or end of a line, which I like a lot.