Funny. My ~/bin is filled with commands that I want to override the system version.
Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
11–20 of 177 posts
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#12> Because my shell script names tended to be short and pithy collections of lowercase characters, just like the default system commands, there was no telling when Linux would add a new command that would happen to have the same name as one of mine.
Not sure I understand this problem. I just put my bin directory at the front of $PATH rather than the end. To browse my commands, I simply `ls ~/bin`.
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#13I've been doing this for at least a decade. Was introduced to the idea by a colleague who might have read this blog post.
I usually do the same with commands where you are able to create sub-commands too, like git-,home (which allows you to run `git ,home add -p` and it conveniently set GIT_DIR to something and GIT_WORKTREE to $HOME). Sadly you can't do it with git aliases, I have to live with them starting with a dot (via '[alias ""]' as a section).
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#14Encountering this idea 5 years allowed me to bring order to my bag of shell tricks! I have over 50 ,commands between aliases and ~/bin and my shell life is way smoother than the previous agglomeration.
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#15I'm curious how folks manage their important local configurations, e.g.
- is your ~/bin directory a git repo?
- if you git to manage your dot files, do you use hard links or soft links?
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#16Funny. My ~/bin is filled with commands that I want to override the system version.
Wrappers or replacements? If it’s a wrapper do you remove local bin from path or hard code system path?
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#17I use short custom command names like aa, st, di, dp, cm and le in some thin wrappers around git. One of these names actually collides with a utility that is installed by default on some systems. Doesn’t matter to me. I have my own bin dirs before the system dirs in my path, so mine “win”, and I’m not really interested at all in the tool that mine has a name collision with. If someone were to make a useful to me tool…
This. 1-3 character names should be reserved for user aliases/functions/scripts and standard utilities.
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Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#18A kinda relevant question.
I use Windows most of time. Like the author, I have bunch of CLI scripts (in Python mainly) which I put into my ~/bin/ equivalent.
After setting python.exe as the default program for `.py` extension, and adding `.py` to `%pathext%`, I can now run my ~/bin/hello.py script at any path by just type `hello`, which I use hundreds of time a day.
I now use Linux more and more (still a newbie) but I never get it to work similarly here.
Firstly, Linux seems to have no concept of "associated program", so you can never "just" call .py file, and let the shell to know to use python to execute it. Sure, you can chmod +x to the script, but then you have to add a shebang line directly to the script itself, which I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-coded (what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp`?).
Furthermore, I failed to find any way to omit `.py` part when calling my script.
Again, none of the above is to question the design of the Linux -- I know it comes with lots of advantages.
But I really, really just want to run `hello` to call a `hello.py` script that is in my $PATH.
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#19> Because my shell script names tended to be short and pithy collections of lowercase characters, just like the default system commands, there was no telling when Linux would add a new command that would happen to have the same name as one of mine. Not sure I understand this problem. I just put my bin directory at the front of $PATH rather than the end. To browse my commands, I simply `ls ~/bin`.
But then you start using some tool that expects $0 in the system path and breaks causing frustration and debugging.
Pick your poison
Re: Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)
#20> Because my shell script names tended to be short and pithy collections of lowercase characters, just like the default system commands, there was no telling when Linux would add a new command that would happen to have the same name as one of mine. Not sure I understand this problem. I just put my bin directory at the front of $PATH rather than the end. To browse my commands, I simply `ls ~/bin`.
One of the benefits is using fzf autocomplete. E.g. in fish type the first char of the command and Tab to launch fzf. Then `,`+Tab is a quick way to filter these custom commands. Versus `ls ~/bin` would be a lot of characters for something I do a lot, or maybe I'd be going `ls`+UpArrow+UpArrow+UpArrow to autocomplete that first.