Scripts I wrote that I use all the time • Hacker News Board

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#231

Post by normie3000 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #188

akersten wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting because there's a significant chance one wastes more time tinkering around with custom scripts than saving in the long run. See https://xkcd.com/1205/ For example. The "saves 5 seconds task that I do once a month" from the blog post. Hopefully the author did not spend more than 5 minutes writing said script and maintaining it, or they're losing time in the long run.

Not all time is created equally though, so I disagree with that xkcd. If something is time sensitive it is worth spending a disproportionate amount of time to speed things up at some later time. For example if you’re debugging something live, in a live presentation, working on something with a tight deadline etc. Also you don’t necessarily know how often you’ll do something anyways.

> I disagree with that xkcd

The xkcd doesn't seem to be pushing an agenda, just providing a lookup table. Time spent vs time saved is factual.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#232

Post by liqilin1567 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:11 AM UTC

One of my biggest headaches is stripping specific number of bytes from the head or tail of a binary file. and I couldn't find any built-in tool for that, so I wrote one in C++.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#233

Post by rkeene2 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:19 AM UTC

liqilin1567 wrote: post #232

One of my biggest headaches is stripping specific number of bytes from the head or tail of a binary file. and I couldn't find any built-in tool for that, so I wrote one in C++.

Last X bytes: dd bs=1 skip=X

First X bytes: dd bs=X count=1

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#234

Post by internet_points » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:20 AM UTC

`line 10` can be written as `sed -n 10p` (instead of head+tail)

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#235

Post by latexr » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:21 AM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #198

latexr wrote: post #33

> trash a.txt b.png moves `a.txt` and `b.png` to the trash. Supports macOS and Linux. The way you’re doing it trashes files sequentially, meaning you hear the trashing sound once per file and ⌘Z in the Finder will only restore the last one. You can improve that (I did it for years) but consider just using the `trash` commands which ships with macOS. Doesn’t use the Finder, so no sound and no ⌘Z, but it’s fast, offici…

I believe it would be possible to execute an applescript to tell the finder to delete the files in one go. It would theoretically be possible to construct/run the applescript directly in a shell script. It would be easier (but still not trivial) to write an applescript file to take the file list as an argument to then delete when calling from the shell.

It’s not theoretical, and it is trivial. Like I said, I did exactly that for years. Specifically, I had a function in my `.zshrc` to expand all inputs to their full paths, verify and exclude invalid arguments, trash the rest in one swoop, then show me an error with the invalid arguments, if any.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#236

Post by latexr » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:26 AM UTC

chipsrafferty wrote: post #17

soiltype wrote: post #6

This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm most interested in finding on HN. How do other developers work, and how can I get better at my work from it? What's always interesting to me is how many of these I'll see and initially think, "I don't really need that." Because I'm well aware of the effect (which I'm sure has a name - I suppose it's similar to induced demand) of "make $uncommon_task much cheaper" -> "$uncommon_ta…

I'd love to see a cost benefit analysis of the author's approach vs yours, which includes the time it took the author to create the scripts, remember/learn to use them/reference them when forgetting syntax, plus time spent migrating whenever changing systems.

> reference them when forgetting syntax

If you have to do that, the script needs improvement. Always add a `--help` which explains what it does and what arguments it takes.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#237

Post by latexr » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:32 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #30

te_cima wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is this interesting to you? the whole point of doing all of this is to be more efficient in the long run. of course there is an initial setup cost and learning curve after which you will hopefully feel quite efficient with your development environment. you are making it sound like it is not worth the effort because you have to potentially spend time learning "it"? i do not believe that it takes long to "learning"…

It's interesting because there's a significant chance one wastes more time tinkering around with custom scripts than saving in the long run. See https://xkcd.com/1205/ For example. The "saves 5 seconds task that I do once a month" from the blog post. Hopefully the author did not spend more than 5 minutes writing said script and maintaining it, or they're losing time in the long run.

One thing which is often ignored in these discussions is the experience you gain. The time you “wasted” on your previous scripts by taking longer to write them compounds in time saved in the future because you can now write more complex tasks faster.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#238

Post by YouAreWRONGtoo » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:34 AM UTC

orhmeh09 wrote: post #143

YouAreWRONGtoo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of trash, reimplementing rm (to only really delete after some time or depending on resource usage or to shred of you are paranoid if the goal is to really delete something) or using zfs makes much more sense.

I can't imagine a scenario where I would want to reimplement rm just for this.

[flagged]

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#239

Post by energy123 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:34 AM UTC

latexr wrote: post #33

> trash a.txt b.png moves `a.txt` and `b.png` to the trash. Supports macOS and Linux. The way you’re doing it trashes files sequentially, meaning you hear the trashing sound once per file and ⌘Z in the Finder will only restore the last one. You can improve that (I did it for years) but consider just using the `trash` commands which ships with macOS. Doesn’t use the Finder, so no sound and no ⌘Z, but it’s fast, offici…

I do `mv a.txt /tmp` instead of `rm`.

Re: Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

#240

Post by thiht » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 8:38 AM UTC

YouAreWRONGtoo wrote: post #123

latexr wrote: post #33

> trash a.txt b.png moves `a.txt` and `b.png` to the trash. Supports macOS and Linux. The way you’re doing it trashes files sequentially, meaning you hear the trashing sound once per file and ⌘Z in the Finder will only restore the last one. You can improve that (I did it for years) but consider just using the `trash` commands which ships with macOS. Doesn’t use the Finder, so no sound and no ⌘Z, but it’s fast, offici…

Instead of trash, reimplementing rm (to only really delete after some time or depending on resource usage or to shred of you are paranoid if the goal is to really delete something) or using zfs makes much more sense.

How is this better?