My favorite command is 'say'. You can do all kinds of silly voices. Try this out: say hello -v Good
Just mucking around, came up with this:
wc -l OS X Command Line Utilities
31–40 of 243 posts
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#32What always surprises me is that so many don't know or use the directory stack commands, pushd and popd. I'll admit I was also ignorant of them until something like 2005, but once I learned of them I switched and never looked back. Now I can't see someone write or type "cd" without a little bit of a cringe.
Many people love them, but I never got the hang of pushd and popd. These days, I use a CDPATH and z[1]. I also use zsh, which supports handy little things such as cd - (cd to previous directory). If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend z. It's impossible to Google for, but it's oh-so-convenient. 1. https://github.com/rupa/z
'cd -' is implemented by the cd command using the OLDPWD environment variable. It works in all shells.
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#33It seems odd to have open /Applications/Safari.app/ as an example, when open -a safari does the same thing.
Except that the first one is supported by TAB-completion.
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#34The article doesn't mention the fun you can have with ssh + say.
My co-workers and I used to ssh into the iMacs of non-technical users in our office and have a good laugh from a nearby room.
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#35It seems odd to have open /Applications/Safari.app/ as an example, when open -a safari does the same thing.
It's hard to beat
cmd+space safariRe: OS X Command Line Utilities
#36I didn't know about `screencapture`. That's a fun one.
The Linux equivalent of `open` is `xdg-open`. I usually alias it to `op`, since `/bin/open` exists.
Another bit of terminal-sugar for OS X users:
alias lock='/System/Library/CoreServices/"Menu Extras"/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend'
alias lock='gnome-screensaver-command -l'
I've sorta-documented this stuff over the years, but only for my own memory. https://gist.github.com/ggreer/3251885 contains some of my notes for what I do with a clean install of OS X. Some of the utility links are dated, but fixing the animation times really improves my quality of life.
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#37What always surprises me is that so many don't know or use the directory stack commands, pushd and popd. I'll admit I was also ignorant of them until something like 2005, but once I learned of them I switched and never looked back. Now I can't see someone write or type "cd" without a little bit of a cringe.
I tend to use "cd -" instead, which goes to the previous directory. Coupled with searching the command line history (C-r in the default emacs-like mode of bash, ESC-/ if you have set vi-like mode with "set -o vi") you can move around quite fast and with little thought.
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#38Another thing you can do to improve speed is learn the keybindings for readline. They are the same keybindings as emacs, and lots of other things use readline too like python shell, sqlite, etc. A very useful set of keys to have in your muscle memory. See the readline manual: http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rluserman.html#SEC3
Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#39Re: OS X Command Line Utilities
#40What always surprises me is that so many don't know or use the directory stack commands, pushd and popd. I'll admit I was also ignorant of them until something like 2005, but once I learned of them I switched and never looked back. Now I can't see someone write or type "cd" without a little bit of a cringe.
A related trick is to use parentheses to create a subshell, in the case where you have a fixed command sequence you want to execute in another directory but you don't want to stay there:
$ pwd
/tmp
$ mkdir -p a/b/c
$ ( cd a/b/c ; pwd )
/tmp/a/b/c
$ pwd
/tmp