Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)

Post by zshev » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

RMPR wrote: post #75

chriswarbo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Emacs shell-mode for most of my terminals, which allows navigating and editing the buffer just like any other file. I'll often make several copies of a command, then use a macro to alter each one; after checking that they look right, pressing Enter will send them all to the shell.

I always tried to use the shell with emacs (eshell, multi-term) but it didn't render correctly curses and all the fancy stuffs like emojis. Out of curiosity, how do you manage that?

Post by mslm » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 11:20 AM UTC

tarruda wrote: post #95

jpab wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of sponge is that you can do this: grep foo file.txt | sponge file.txt If you do this with redirections then file.txt will be truncated before it's been processed, leaving you with an empty file instead of what you wanted. Sponge collects its input first and then writes everything out at the end, so you can output to a file that was used as an input. (Parent updated while I was writing. Oh well)

That doesn't seem like an efficient way to do it. Commands that process file in place (sed -i) write to a temporary file in the same filesystem and then rename to the target file, which works if you want to process files that don't fit into memory.

Post by dwheeler » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #93

donatj wrote: post #85

A lot of these seem easily achieved in a POSIX shell manner, but most annoyingly to me > sponge: soak up standard input and write to a file I do that all the time... cat > file.txt Update: reading the comments on here, apparently sponge sucks up all content before opening the destination file which allows editing an input file in place. Minor advantage there.

Not minor; it's literally the point of this tool

Post by timonoko » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

timonoko wrote: post #50

Where is Msdos utility "ncd"? It was like "cd" but guessed from few character hint where you wanted to go. If the choice was not immediately obvious if offered a menu or a tree. I shortened it to "n". -- There was some linux utility but setting it up was annoyingly tedious, with lots of useless and cryptic options.

    #! /bin/bash
     d=$(find /  -name "$1" 2>/dev/null | head -1)
     echo Jumping to $d, Control-D to return 
     sleep 1
     cd $d
     bash

Post by gray_-_wolf » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 12:12 PM UTC

rmetzler wrote: post #57

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the top answer has it: > find . -maxdepth 1 -type f A little clunky, but there's certainly no need to mess about in JavaScript land. If you use it often, create a shell macro.

find doesn't return the same output as ls when run on another directory. Maybe there is a switch to do this? I'm not sure. $ mkdir -p tmp && touch tmp/a tmp/b tmp/c $ find ./tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f ./tmp/a ./tmp/c ./tmp/b $ ls -1 ./tmp a b c

    +   $ find /tmp/x ! -path /tmp/x -prune -type f -exec sh -c 'for p; do printf '\''%s\n'\'' "${p##*/}"; done' - {} +
    c
    b
    a