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Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

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Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#31

Post by skydhash »

burntsushi wrote: post #21

I'm the author of Bttf. I just wanted to share a really cool example of something that Bttf can do that I _think_ is kinda hard to do otherwise. (And also, I want to make an assertion about it and I hope this will lead to me being wrong and learning something new.) The use case is: "I want to see a list of all files in a repository, sorted in ascending order of when it was most recently changed according to source co…

Quick Note: You can put the pipe operator where your backslash is and you won’t have to escape the newline character. Works in bash, zsh and ksh (what I’ve tested).

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#32

Post by hk1337 »

burntsushi wrote: post #19
yzydserd wrote: post #2

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

Griff is still available for future projects or Buford if you create a throwback project.

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#33

Post by burntsushi »

skydhash wrote: post #31
burntsushi wrote: post #21

I'm the author of Bttf. I just wanted to share a really cool example of something that Bttf can do that I _think_ is kinda hard to do otherwise. (And also, I want to make an assertion about it and I hope this will lead to me being wrong and learning something new.) The use case is: "I want to see a list of all files in a repository, sorted in ascending order of when it was most recently changed according to source co…

Quick Note: You can put the pipe operator where your backslash is and you won’t have to escape the newline character. Works in bash, zsh and ksh (what I’ve tested).

Oh nice thank you!

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#34

Post by dcminter »

throw0101a wrote: post #14
yzydserd wrote: post #2

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

I.e., NAME biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from […] HISTORY The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD. It was named after the dog of Heidi Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15. * https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff Eric Cooper, a student contemporary to Foderero and Stettner, reports that the dog would bark at the mail carrier,[4][5] making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notifica…

From the excellent "A Quarter Century of UNIX" (by the late Peter H. Salus):

Heidi would bring her dog with her to class and to her office. He was a very friendly dog, and a lot of the students enjoyed throwing a ball for him down the corridor to fetch. He even had his picture on the bulletin board with the graduate students: the legend read that he was working on his Ph.Dog. John decided to name the program after the dog: Biff. According to Heidi, John and Bill Joy then spent a lot of time trying to compose an explanation for biff - they came up with "Be notified if mail arrived." Biff, who died in August 1993, at 15, once got a B in a compiler class. According to Heidi, the story of Biff barking at the mailman is a scurrilous canard.

One of my favourite bits of trivia from that excellent book, but hardly anyone I bump into these days knows anything about that kind of multi-user Unix experience/environment these days. I barely caught any of it myself.

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#37

Post by christoff12 »

burntsushi wrote: post #21

I'm the author of Bttf. I just wanted to share a really cool example of something that Bttf can do that I _think_ is kinda hard to do otherwise. (And also, I want to make an assertion about it and I hope this will lead to me being wrong and learning something new.) The use case is: "I want to see a list of all files in a repository, sorted in ascending order of when it was most recently changed according to source co…

This is pretty neat. My proficiency with the command line is woefully underdeveloped and seeing examples like this help me see the possibilities.

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#38

Post by Crontab »

zokier wrote: post #35
rippeltippel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also made ripgrep

And xsv. Burntsushi projects have certain quiet sensibility that I appreciate.

I only recently realized that xsv is now unmaintained. The author now suggests using qsv or xan.

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#39

Post by abrowne »

throw0101c wrote: post #20
burntsushi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen? * https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?

I know that if you want `fd` (https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) you need to `apt install fd-find` and which installs the binary `fdfind` (!).

Re: Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

#40

Post by m463 »

burntsushi wrote: post #19
yzydserd wrote: post #2

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine.

collisions, lol

  % apt-cache search biff
  biff - a mail notification tool
  gnubiff - mail notification program for GNOME (and others)
  wmbiff - Dockable app that displays information about mailboxes
  xlbiff - mail notification pop-up with configurable message scans
(along with 9 more matches without biff in command name)
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