Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

spacecowboyrocketcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 48 posts

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#31

Post by 458QxfC2z3 »

endur wrote: post #26
bcook wrote: post #20

My most used bash command is probably "sudo !!", which runs the previous command with "sudo" prepended. The book "Unix Power Tools" showed me that higher-level programming languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, etc) are not needed to accomplish most administrative tasks. Awk is incredibly useful (but also very confusing, imo).

I really like '!$' and '!:1' in bash. '!$' holds the last argument of the last command and '!:n' holds the nth argument. $ cd /big/long/path/to/this.txt Oops $ vim !$

If using readline (emacs) keybindings, press Alt and period for the same effect as !$.

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#32

Post by wolfhumble »

tensorproduct wrote: post #25

The first thing I do on any bash terminal is `set -o vi`. This changes the default keybindings from emacs-like to vi-like. I find it to be a huge booster to my speed in navigating the command line. edit: Actually, something cool I learned recently is that if you put the line "set editing-mode vi" in your ~/.inputrc then vi-like editing keys are available in any program that uses readline. This includes bash and the p…

How do you typically go to e.g. beginning/end of line; via insert or normal mode and which key combinations do you prefer? Always been using ctrl+a and ctrl+e in emacs mode myself . . .

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#33

Post by endur »

codyb wrote: post #13
guruparan18 wrote: post #5

Very true. I have difficulties in training new recruits with UNIX. For some reason, beginners have developed an aversion to UNIX/shell scripting. I myself have started more and more of Ruby/AWK/Python, but it is always SHELL that blows me off with the sort of impact it has on the daily work. I ended up highly optimizing my work environment to replace long ssh connections with `conn prod` (will use my RSA key and conn…

I'm a relative newbie in the field, but I really love using terminal (I do all my C work for grad school in ViM), it's really essential at work, there's no faster way to do batch file processing a lot of times (especially with ffmpeg, awesome). I'm surprised people don't like terminal, I love using it. It makes me feel old school, sort of like one of those hackers in the movies. That's probably just a personal thing.…

It just takes a while to be faster in the terminal than with the gui, and most people won't switch from the thing they're used to until they see significant advantages.

I remember when I first started using the terminal, it was slow and confusing. You had to read the man pages for every little thing. Discovering the command you want is tough, I'd be screwed without the internet.

Now I hate when I need to take my hands of the keyboard to use the mouse. What a waste of time!

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#34

Post by endur »

function_seven wrote: post #24
lukabratos wrote: post #2

http://xkcd.com/1168/ ^_^

I forget where I got this from, but this is how I remember it: tar -xzf # eXtract Ze Files! EDIT: I missed chadzawistowski's similar comment below

After googling this three separate times I finally just aliased it to an 'untar' command. I'll remember this for when I'm ssh'ed somewhere!

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#35

Post by OlivierLi »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #12
lfowles wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Accidentally ran `cd`? Run `cd -` to return I think there are some pop/push mechanics for working directory too, but I can't find them right now.

The commands are pushd and popd, and they're bash (and zsh, and most sane shell) builtins. Pushd to get to a new directory, popd to go back to the last one on the stack.

Tip : Setting cd as an alias for pushd make the whole thing much more intuitive.

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#36

Post by endur »

tensorproduct wrote: post #27
tieTYT wrote: post #21

This is probably misunderstanding the demographic, but why does he suggest using nano over vim?

Maybe they just prefer nano? More likely, if this is meant to be a gentle introduction to the command line, vim is a pretty scary place. Nano works much more like a "normal" text editor.

Until you want to undo something! Nano is definitely more user-friendly though. Some of the engineers I work with still don't know basic vim shortcuts, like 'w' and 'b'

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#37

Post by voidhorse »

I love playing around in bash. Most of the scripts I have right now are just for setting up project templates, adding common packages etc.

Actually, I think most people who use computers at work, be they writers, designers, whatever, not just programmers, would benefit from learning some bash (or batch). You can automate a lot of useful processes with a few simple scripts.

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#39

Post by Apofis »

function_seven wrote: post #24
lukabratos wrote: post #2

http://xkcd.com/1168/ ^_^

I forget where I got this from, but this is how I remember it: tar -xzf # eXtract Ze Files! EDIT: I missed chadzawistowski's similar comment below

I don't understand why you need options at all... If you point it at a file/directory it should automatically compress and if you point it at an archive it should automatically decompress. The options should be there for advanced tasks not 90% of the tasks you need the app for. It's really poor ui design.

Re: Know Your Tools – Terminal and Bash

#40

Post by halisaurus »

guruparan18 wrote: post #5

Very true. I have difficulties in training new recruits with UNIX. For some reason, beginners have developed an aversion to UNIX/shell scripting. I myself have started more and more of Ruby/AWK/Python, but it is always SHELL that blows me off with the sort of impact it has on the daily work. I ended up highly optimizing my work environment to replace long ssh connections with `conn prod` (will use my RSA key and conn…

If you didn't know you can put ssh configurations (hosts, ports, keys, etc) in ~/.ssh/config. You can use it in scp like 'scp prod:path/to/file path/to/destination'. Not sure if there's a pro/con to mapping an alias.
Post reply on HN