What are your command line tips?

Oh my, I love this topic! Here comes a wall of text:

Using !! redo the last command, which is specially useful for those times you forgot to run that big annoying command as sudo, you can just run sudo !! this time.

Also, if you just cd without arguments, you end in your home. Sometimes thats useful.

On the same theme of cd, you can cd - to go to last directory. I love this! Also works with git checkout - to go to the last branch!

Another one is that if you use bash or zsh (and probably fish?) in emacs mode, which is the default, there are some commands that are very helpful:

• Control + w Deletes one word behind, like control + backspace on some editors
• Control + k Deletes everything from cursor to the end of the line. Maybe only the start of your command was right and you don't want to retype a bunch of things.
• Control + u Deletes everything from cursor to the start of the line. Maybe only the end of your command was right.
• Control + y Paste the last thing you deleted using the above commands. A god send.

Honorable mentions:

• Control + e and Control + a go to the end of the line/start of the line, respectively
• Control + p is the same as up arrow, useful if you think the arrow keys are far away
• Control + n is the same as down arrow. Ditto above
• Control + m is the same as hitting enter
• `Control + i is the same as tab (completion)

I particularly use control + p a lot!

And as a side note, if you don't want to go sudo !! like I suggested initally, you can always go up in history (control+p or up arrow, you name it), cut everything with control+u, write sudo and then paste it with control+y. Really good commands here!

And you can always customize what key presses do with bind in bash and bindkey in zsh.

If you are on bash, you can see all commands with bind -P and bind -p. To set different things, you can run (or put in config file, eg, .bashrc) something like bind '"\C-f":clear-screen'.

If on zsh though, just bindkey is enough to list them, and bindkey "^F" clear-screen to remap.

I personally use control + f as clear screen for so long, that when I'm at a computer that does not have it I feel lost initially, which is arguably a downside to customization of hotkeys, specially for commands that already have a simple command, like clear screen. Maybe you should not use the mapping I do! 😅

I'll go first

Ctrl+R Autocomplete with Bash is a Life Saver

Ben Halpern ・ Jan 17 '17 ・ 1 min read

#bash

If you are going to take the time to setup your command line real nice, then you need a dotfiles repo, if you have a dotfiles repo you need to stow.

2 minutes to stow

Waylon Walker ・ Jan 9 ・ 1 min read

#linux #cli #bash

I always thought the stow docs jump right into the weeds and make it sound very complicated, but It's pretty simple if you worry less about the implementation.

TL;DR. The first step of being master of any command:

tldr.sh/

➜  ~ tldr curl
curl

Transfers data from or to a server.
Supports most protocols, including HTTP, FTP, and POP3.
More information: <https://curl.se>.

- Download the contents of a URL to a file:
    curl http://example.com --output filename

- Download a file, saving the output under the filename indicated by the URL:
    curl --remote-name http://example.com/filename

- Download a file, following location redirects, and automatically continuing (resuming) a previous file transfer and return an error on server error:
    curl --fail --remote-name --location --continue-at - http://example.com/filename

- Send form-encoded data (POST request of type `application/x-www-form-urlencoded`). Use `--data @file_name` or `--data @'-'` to read from STDIN:
    curl --data 'name=bob' http://example.com/form

- Send a request with an extra header, using a custom HTTP method:
    curl --header 'X-My-Header: 123' --request PUT http://example.com

- Send data in JSON format, specifying the appropriate content-type header:
    curl --data '{"name":"bob"}' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' http://example.com/users/1234

- Pass a username and password for server authentication:
    curl --user myusername:mypassword http://example.com

- Pass client certificate and key for a resource, skipping certificate validation:
    curl --cert client.pem --key key.pem --insecure https://example.com

if, during development, you

• must type a command more than twice
• type several commands that look similar
• work in a team of more than 2 devs

you should use bash or powershell to automate whatever you're doing.

Computers are way better than keeping stuff in mind than people. I'm writing scripts for every non-throwaway project by now

Latest one for the appwrite hackathon goes

#!/bin/zsh
COMMAND=$1

startAppwrite() {
  docker run --rm -it \
    --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
    --volume "$(pwd)"/appwrite:/usr/src/code/appwrite:rw \
    --entrypoint="install" \
    appwrite/appwrite:0.13.4
}

startFrontend() {
  docker-compose up --build
}

install() {
  echo "Installing appwrite cli ..."
  npm install -g appwrite-cli

  echo "Logging in to API ..."
  appwrite login

  echo "Initializing Project"
  appwrite init --all
}

# Commando functions
initServices() {
  echo "Setting up appwrite for the first time"
  startAppwrite
  install
  startFrontend
}

stopServices() {
  echo "Stopping iCuisine services"
  docker-compose down
  docker-compose --file appwrite/docker-compose.yml down
}

# Command execution
case "$COMMAND" in

up)
  initServices
  ;;
down)
  stopServices
  ;;
[iI]*)
  install
  ;;
*)
  echo "No command recognized. "
  echo "Possible commands: [up, down, login, i(nstall)]"
  ;;
esac

This little bit of code saves me at least 1 minute whenever I want to bring up or down my dev server. Took like 5 to write. And I have to memorise only a few commands instead of several. Totally worth it

I have a series of 7th articles with a lot of them for ZSH:
dev.to/equiman/series/11407

Another to config zsh + power level 10 on macOS:

iTerm2 + Oh My Zsh! + Powerlevel10K best terminal combination for Geeks!

Camilo Martinez ・ Sep 25 '18 ・ 5 min read

#productivity #terminal #macos #zsh

But the most useful for me is config the fingerprint reader to use on the terminal when asking for a password:

How to use MacOS's Touch ID on Terminal

Camilo Martinez ・ Oct 8 '19 ・ 1 min read

#macos #productivity #hacks

fish!

fishshell.com/

git diff more of a git tip but it saves me time and trouble seeing if/what differences I have between my branch and main.

Only 1 thing,
Learn a liitle bit of shell scripting, it changes how one works with a terminal/CLI
Knowing a bunch of things and putting them together to improve your workflow as developer everyone should strive for.

One of my recently acquired command line tip, create this function

? () { echo "$*" | bc ; }

usage

$> ? 8*5
40

$> ? 2+2+9*9+(2-8)
79

No need to create a python process or node process ( or any other interactive shell ) for quick calculation. It just takes the mathematical query and throw it to BC which then return the result.

Install yourself a variant (for your distro) of github.com/rupa/z and never search for a directory ever again!

DESCRIPTION
       Tracks your most used directories, based on 'frecency'.

       After  a  short  learning  phase, z will take you to the most 'frecent'
       directory that matches ALL of the regexes given on the command line, in
       order.

       For example, z foo bar would match /foo/bar but not /bar/foo.

Don't edit bash scripts while it is running; even when it takes forever.

In contrast, other types of scripts, like Python, can be edited for the next run.

I also have seen set -e. I wonder if it can be safely used with other kind of logics?

Switch to the previous directory you were in: cd -

A similar command exists with Git and branches: git checkout - or simply gco - since git-checkout is often aliased to "gco."

To check what specific server is domain running at:

nmap somewebsitegoeshere.com --script whois-ip