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My Favorite Bash Tips, Tricks, and Shortcuts

Yechiel Kalmenson on January 11, 2021

If you're on DEV, chances are you spend at least some time in the terminal, maybe even a lot of time. Over the years, I've picked up a number of t...

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Heiker • Jan 12 '21

# Up Arrow
bind '"\e[A": history-search-backward'

# Down Arrow
bind '"\e[B": history-search-forward'

The history-search-* enable a "search by prefix".

Let's say I have this in my history.

node ./test.js
vi /tmp/text.txt
nvim /tmp/text.txt
echo "a string with vi in it"
vi /tmp/other-text.txt

if I type vi and start pressing the up arrow bash will only show me the entries that begins with vi. Which is awesome. I have a couple of commands that have been on my history for months, and I have never typed them twice, it's always the first two letters + up + enter.

Here is another trick

# Space, but magical
bind Space:magic-space

This one enables history expansion with the space key. So you can do sudo !! + space, and it will show you the entire command before you run it.

Nilkun • Jan 12 '21

Just copy-pasted your code into my .bashrc! That is an amazing trick!

Aashutosh Rathi • Jan 15 '21

Hey! Would you like to add this sorcery at github.com/aashutoshrathi/awesome-...?

Heiker • Jan 15 '21

Sure. I'll do that.

I would like to mention that I got this from the oh-my-bash repo. They have a ton of interesting things there.

Lui • Jan 15 '21

You should really have a look at github.com/junegunn/fzf

This changed my life and how I work with the command line forever.

Heiker • Jan 15 '21

Oh I know about fzf, I use it extensively inside vim (I would be lost without it). Sadly I don't have many use cases for it in my day to day.

But this reminds me of yet another thing you can do with bind. One can bind key sequence with a "macro", it's like simulating keystrokes.

I have these two.

# Alt + f 
bind '"\ef": "\C-e | fzf"'

# Alt + p
bind '"\ep": "\C-e | less"'

Alt + f will append | fzf at the end of a command and Alt + p does the same but with less. This works by using the sequence \C-e (ctrl + e) which makes the cursor go to the end of the line and basically typing the rest for you.

Jonathan Boudreau • Jan 14 '21

Other readline shortcuts are also pretty handy:

alt + f: move forward one word
alt + b: move backward one word
ctrl + e: move to end of line
ctrl + a: move to start of line
ctrl + w: delete the previous word
alt + d: delete the next word

These also work with many terminal applications such as repls.

Cameren Dolecheck • Jan 14 '21 • Edited

I clearly didn't look that hard, but I tried to find these hotkeys once and couldn't find them super quick. This is exactly the list I've been looking for. Thanks!

I am having trouble figuring out what the alt is on Mac for this. Often alt = option, but in this case it just does the special characters like ∫ for alt + b.

Yechiel Kalmenson • Jan 14 '21

Awesome!

I've been using the Home and End buttons to go to the beginning/end of the line.

Ben Sinclair • Jan 12 '21

You have these stored in .bash_aliases (which is conventional) but I use an .aliases filename, because the alias command is pretty much the same in most shells. That means when I'm using zsh on a Mac, I don't feel dirty loading a bash configuration file.

I also put functions that are very close to being aliases in that file, which feels a little wrong, but if it's just to allow passing a single parameter to the middle of what would otherwise be an alias, I'm okay with it :)

I conditionally apply aliases that shadow other commands so as not to break functionality:

if command -v bat >/dev/null; then
  alias cat='bat'
fi

And I split things up if I need to like this:

case $OSTYPE in
  linux-gnu)
    alias ls='ls --color --group-directories-first -FhN'
    alias pbcopy='xclip -selection clipboard'
    ;;
  darwin*)
    alias ls='ls -FhG'
  ;;
esac

Yechiel Kalmenson • Jan 12 '21 • Edited

I actually store mine in a git repo and then add a line to my .bashrc to source the files in that repo (the repo is here if you're curious), but I used .bash_aliases here to follow convention (and because most .bashrc's are already configured to look there).

Yeah, I also have a few functions in my alias file, for the same reason. If it looks like an alias, acts like an alias... 😉

Nilkun • Jan 12 '21

Didn't know about Ctrl-R. That really is a lifesaver!

I also just published an article with my favorite bash functions and aliases.

A small byte of bash aliases and functions.

Nilkun ・ Jan 12 ・ 1 min read

#linux #bash #productivity #discuss

Jonas Brømsø • Jan 13 '21

One of the less funky bash tricks, which I find it a bit overlooked is the ability to trim or slim the command line history.

Here is an example:

export HISTIGNORE="pwd:ls:ls -l:cd:clear"

Lifted from my "Today I Learned" collection

Lars Moelleken • Jan 17 '21 • Edited

Tip: if you add aliases you can add the original command as prefix, so that if you have auto-completion, you can remember your stuff. :)

e.g.: aliases
github.com/voku/dotfiles/blob/mast...

# show the biggest files in a folder first
alias du_overview='du -h | grep "^[0-9,]*[MG]" | sort -hr | less'

e.g.: functions
github.com/voku/dotfiles/blob/mast...

# history_top_used: show your most used commands in your history
history_top_used()
{
  history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head
}

Yechiel Kalmenson • Jan 17 '21

Great idea!

Peter Mortensen • Jul 15 '21 • Edited

I was expecting an explanation of the mysterious dot source (as one will probably encounter it sooner or later).

For instance, could ". ~/.bash_aliases" be used as an alternative to "source ~/.bash_aliases"? If it could, perhaps add something about to the end of the this article?

Matthieu Cneude • Jan 12 '21

The CLI fzf is a nice addition to CTRL+r. I can't search in my command line history without it anymore. You can as well search a file in directories / sub-directories with it, or even with Vim / Neovim to search a file in your project, or some text in a bunch of file combined with ripgrep! Really cool.

github.com/junegunn/fzf

Yechiel Kalmenson • Jan 12 '21

I've seen that being used!

Personally I use z (github.com/rupa/z) to jump around between directories, but I wanted to limit the post to features built in to bash rather than tools I have installed.