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Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

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Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#131

Post by Pay08 »

Orygin wrote: post #121
JadeNB wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This weird command is presented with such a benevolent innocence as if it's the simplest thing in the world. I think it's a question of context and familiarity. To a vim user, like me and, I assume, ahmedfromtunis, their examples do indeed seem simple and natural. Presumably, to an emacs user, the example you quote (if it's quoted literally—I don't use emacs and can't even tell) is just as natural, and assuming som…

> assuming some comfort with emacs is presumably OK in a manual for the software! How do you get familiar with the software, if the manual expects you to be an expert in it already?

By reading introductory material.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#132

Post by School-Cotton »

mr_mitm wrote: post #22
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vi mode is also available in Claude code and gemini-cli to give some recent examples, and a bunch of other places you might not expect it, as well the more obvious places where code is written. Once you get used to it, it is painful to go back.

My biggest complaint about the fish shell is the lack of true vi mode. They attempt to emulate it and it works to some degree, but it's no comparison to readline's implementation.

Have you tried a recent version? An issue I opened about this years ago was finally closed, they claim it’s fixed now. I haven’t tried the purported fix, though.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#133

Post by BeetleB »

bwhaley wrote: post #87
alberto-m wrote: post #81

One thing I find life-changing is to remap the up arrow so that it does not iterates through all commands, but only those starting with the characters I have already written. So e.g. I can type `tar -`, then the up arrow, and get the tar parameters that worked last time. In zsh this is configured with bindkey "^[OA" up-line-or-beginning-search # Up bindkey "^[OB" down-line-or-beginning-search # Down

Once you start using CTRL+r, you may find that you never reach for up arrow again.

There is a difference, I believe. Doesn't Ctrl+r do a substring search instead?

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#134

Post by TacticalCoder »

alberto-m wrote: post #81

One thing I find life-changing is to remap the up arrow so that it does not iterates through all commands, but only those starting with the characters I have already written. So e.g. I can type `tar -`, then the up arrow, and get the tar parameters that worked last time. In zsh this is configured with bindkey "^[OA" up-line-or-beginning-search # Up bindkey "^[OB" down-line-or-beginning-search # Down

That's a nice one.

One thing I do is configure my keyboard so that "modifier+{ijkl}" mimicks the inverted T arrows key cluster. So there's never a need for me to reach for the arrow keys. And {ijk} makes more sense than vi's {hjkl} and is faster/more logical/less key fingers travel. The nice thing is: as I do this at the keyboard level, this works in every single map. "modifier" in my case is "an easily reachable key in a natural hand position on which my left thumb is always resting" but YMMV.

I set that up years ago and it works in every app: it's gorgeous. Heck, I'm using it while editing this very message for example.

And of course it composes with SHIFT too: it's basically arrow keys, except at the fingers' natural positions.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#135

Post by BeetleB »

alberto-m wrote: post #81

One thing I find life-changing is to remap the up arrow so that it does not iterates through all commands, but only those starting with the characters I have already written. So e.g. I can type `tar -`, then the up arrow, and get the tar parameters that worked last time. In zsh this is configured with bindkey "^[OA" up-line-or-beginning-search # Up bindkey "^[OB" down-line-or-beginning-search # Down

Heh. I've done this since forever, but I use PgUp and PgDn so I can retain the original meaning of the up arrow key.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#136

Post by TacticalCoder »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #83
alberto-m wrote: post #81

One thing I find life-changing is to remap the up arrow so that it does not iterates through all commands, but only those starting with the characters I have already written. So e.g. I can type `tar -`, then the up arrow, and get the tar parameters that worked last time. In zsh this is configured with bindkey "^[OA" up-line-or-beginning-search # Up bindkey "^[OB" down-line-or-beginning-search # Down

> life-changing For further life-changing experience... add aliases to .bash_aliases alias gph='history | grep --colour -i ' alias gpc='grep --colour -Hin ' #if gnu time is installed alias timef='/usr/bin/time -f "tm %E , cpu %P , mem %M" '

I've got many like these I copied from various people over the years.

One I came up and that I use all the time:

    alias wl='wc -l'
I use it so much I sometimes forget it's not stock.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#137

Post by TacticalCoder »

fzeindl wrote: post #64

My header on top of every script #!/usr/bin/env bash set -eEuo pipefail # shellcheck disable=SC2034 DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )" #######################################################

Wait... Most of my shell scripts have zero unused variables: I prefer to comment them if I may need them later on.

Why do you disable SC2034?

I don't think not having unused variables prevent me from doing things in my scripts!?

I understand if it's a preference but SC2034 is basically one of my biggest timesavers: in my case unused variables are typically a bug. Except, maybe, ANSI coloring variables at the top of the script.

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#138

Post by dunb »

mr_mitm wrote: post #22
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vi mode is also available in Claude code and gemini-cli to give some recent examples, and a bunch of other places you might not expect it, as well the more obvious places where code is written. Once you get used to it, it is painful to go back.

My biggest complaint about the fish shell is the lack of true vi mode. They attempt to emulate it and it works to some degree, but it's no comparison to readline's implementation.

What is it lacking in your eyes that makes it not true? I find fish’s vi mode more ergonomically complete for things like editing multi-line commands

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#139

Post by fp64 »

void-star wrote: post #113
commandersaki wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a (n)vim user for 20+ years now, but I hate vi-mode in the shell. However if I feel that I need to do a complex command, I just do ctrl-x+e to open up in neovim (with EDITOR=nvim set). I find it a good middle ground.

It’s strange. I have heard this from lots of others too. I think I am an anomaly here. I can’t live without shell vi mode

You're not alone, I heavily rely on vi mode and often struggle if I'm on someone else's machine and can't use it. I always wonder how you're supposed to work without it but I never dare to ask

Re: Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

#140

Post by scbrg »

aa-jv wrote: post #3

My favourite shell trick is to comment my code: $ some_long_command -with -args -easily -forgotten # thatspecialthing ... Some weeks later .. $ CTRL-R .. finds: $ some_long_command -with -args -easily -forgotten # thatspecialthing Need to see all the special things you've done this week/whenever? $ history | grep "\#" ... Makes for a definite return of sanity ..

I once saw this pattern referred to as a bashtag, which I think was an excellent name (no matter if you actually run bash as your shell or not).
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