Its almost ironical that we still use the Terminal - and many use it like in the eighties using Bash - and seem to have forgotten that we should invent a better terminal & shell than doing all the workarounds to handle the quirks of the current systems.
Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
201–210 of 287 posts
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#202If only somebody had a lifehack for making me remember all these awesome commands.
If I do something the slow way it's usually because I don't do the operation enough to burn it into my memory, or I got burned by accidentally hitting something close but incorrect once and closed the tab or something.
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#203If only somebody had a lifehack for making me remember all these awesome commands. If I do something the slow way it's usually because I don't do the operation enough to burn it into my memory, or I got burned by accidentally hitting something close but incorrect once and closed the tab or something.
post-it note until you dont need it anymore
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#204If only somebody had a lifehack for making me remember all these awesome commands. If I do something the slow way it's usually because I don't do the operation enough to burn it into my memory, or I got burned by accidentally hitting something close but incorrect once and closed the tab or something.
I hate to be the AI guy, but a coach that lived in my terminal and corrected me when I do it the slow way would actually help.
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#205Earlier 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.
1. work on a project on host_foo in /home/user/src/myproject
2. clone it on host_bar in /home/user/src/myproject
If you set filter_mode = "directory", you can recall project specific commands from host_foo for use on host_bar even though you're working on different machines and the search space won't be cluttered with project specific commands for other projects.
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#206Its almost ironical that we still use the Terminal - and many use it like in the eighties using Bash - and seem to have forgotten that we should invent a better terminal & shell than doing all the workarounds to handle the quirks of the current systems.
Make a better system, and we'll consider using it.
A Terminal + Bash/ZSH is soooo sticky because they are VERY good at what they do once you learn the basics and quirks. And now with LLMs, CLIs are even better because LLMs talk in text and CLIs talk in text.
Microsoft tried with PowerShell to design a better system; it "technically" is better, but not "better enough" to justify the cost of switching (on Linux). The same is true of nushell; it is "better", but not better enough to justify switching for most people.
I believe we're at "peak input method" until someone invents BrainComputer interfaces.
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow I hate* that. I use bracket comments. They're cool cause they are bracket comments, so I use it in scripts to document pipelines. They are annoying cause they are bracket comments, in an interactive shell I have to type more and in TWO places. It's fun to reason-out how it works ;) $ echo foo | tr fo FO | sed 's/FOO/BAR/' BAR $ echo foo | ${IFS# tr fo FO | } sed 's/FOO/BAR/' foo It's nice to have a way to both /*…
for multiline pipes, it's WAY better to format like foo | bar | baz You don't have to use backquotes, AND, it allows you to comment line by line, because there's no backslash messing with the parser. I also use a last `|\ncat` so you can delete any line and you don't have to worry about the last line being a bit different than the rest I created a list of similar tricks in https://github.com/kidd/scripting-field-guid…
You'll probably dislike this too:
$ {
> echo foo \
> && echo bar \
> || echo baz ;
> }
foo
bar
$IFS
${IFS# echo foo && echo bar || echo baz ; }
$ _
$ foo |
bar | # ?Do? *the* $bar$ && [do] {it!}
baz
$ foo | bar | # ?Do? *the* $bar$ && [do] {it!}
bazRe: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#208One trick I use all the time: You're typing a long command, then before running it you remember you have to do some stuff first. Instead of Ctrl-C to cancel it, you push it to history in a disabled form. Prepend the line with # to comment it, run the commented line so it gets added to history, do whatever it is you remembered, then up arrow to retrieve the first command. $ long_command $ #long_command $ stuff_1 $ stu…
You missed an easier alternative that was in the article: ctrl-u saves and clears the current line, then you can input new commands, then use ctrl-y to yank the saved command.
With zsh, I prefer to use alt-q which does this automatically (store the current line, display a new prompt, then, after the new command is sent, restore the stored line). It can also stack the paused commands, e.g.:
$ cp foo/bar dest/
$ wcurl -o foo/bar "$URL"
$ mkdir foo
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#209Not a fan of the LLM-flavoured headings, and the tips seem like a real mixed bag (and it'd be nice to give credit specifically to the readline library where appropriate as opposed to the shell), but there are definitely a few things in here I'll have to play around with. One thing I dislike about brace expansions is that they don't play nicely with tab completion. I'd rather have easy ways to e.g. duplicate the last…
Not just the heading is LLM-flavoured. So is the writing, e.g. "The shell is a toolbox, not an obstacle course."
Yeah, there are a few of those, but overall there wasn't really enough prose in total to really irritate me. And those LLM-isms do come from somewhere, and I really do get the sense that some humans are effectively training themselves off of AI now.
Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
#210You'll look like the coolest person in the office running `sudo !!`. Another personal favorite of mine is using the --now flag for systemctl to enable & start a service in one command (i.e `systemctl enable --now nginx`)