Post your Command line tricks

[machinebacon]

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sh eyes

[rhowaldt]

^ hahahahaha fucking nice

[dkeg]

Of course, aliases are exactly for this. I have a full list of them. Though it has one disadvantage, sometimes you forget the real commands. :)

how true. Confession, there have been times I have to open my alias file to verify the command :)

[wuxmedia]

^ no need to 'cat ~/ .bash_aliases'
try

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alias -p

[pidsley]

You can also use "which" or "alias" to see a single alias.

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% which ver    
ver: aliased to apt-cache policy

I have an alias for editing my aliases. :)

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% alias aka
aka='nano ~/.zsh_aliases'

[rhowaldt]

^ hihi, i have aliases to edit my bashrc too :)

[ivanovnegro]

^ no need to 'cat ~/ .bash_aliases'
try

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alias -p

Great.

[xaos52]

or

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alias

[she_dyed]

Need to make quick notes on that special command you just ran? Hit the arrow key up, enclose in quotes, and save in a file called RREADME. (the double RR will prevent it from getting overwritten by an accidental unzip)

echo 'conky -c myweatherrc' >> RREADME

You can add notes prior e.g. a clear line and a comment

echo ' ' >> RREADME
echo ' command for conky to display my local weather:' >> RREADME

Use your favorite editor to improve it. Save the file to a USB before your upgrade. I use it to recall steps on how to set up my dual screens on proprietary nvidia drivers.

[DebianJoe]

Along with useful aliases, I often scratch some rudimentary functions into my .bashrc...this one probably gets more use than anything else I have:

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extract () {
    # A check for flags on compressed files.
    if [ -f $1 ] ; then
	case $1 in
	    *.tar.bz2)
		tar -xvjf $1
		;;
	    *.tar.gz)
		tar -xvzf $1
		;;
	    *.bz2)
		bunzip2 $1
		;;
	    *.rar)
		unrar x $1
		;;
	    *.gz)
		gunzip $1
		;;
	    *.tar)
		tar -xf $1
		;;
	    *.tbz2)
		tar -xvjf $1
		;;
	    *.tgz)
		tar -xvzf $1
		;;
	    *.zip)
		unzip $1
		;;
	    *.Z)
		uncompress $1
		;;
	    *)
		echo "$1 is not valid for extraction"
		;;
	esac
    else
	echo "$1 is not a valid file"
    fi
}

[wuxmedia]

^ neat, me likey.
who needs a text editor?

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$ cat > Textfile.txt << EOF
(type your textfile, no need for quotes, or anything. Once finished type;
EOF

BTW the 'EOF' can be replaced by almost anything, but 'EOF' doesn't tend to crop up too often.

[pidsley]

^^ Debian has "unp" which can unpack almost any archive format automatically. I think it's already installed on most bbq spins (even Bass and Tiny). The GRML zsh config also has a built-in unpack function.

If you use the tar commands at the command line (or in a script like Joe's), if you put all the letter options in a "clump" right after the "tar" command, you don't need a dash in front of them.

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tar -xzvf tarfile

is equivalent to

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tar xzvf tarfile

Finally, this is one place where I actually believe it is a good idea to learn the direct commands for a few common formats, just in case you find yourself on a system with no alias and no unp package. Or in front of a bomb.

[DebianJoe]

^^ when I wrote my little addition, this very comic came to mind. :D

[ivanovnegro]

Great comic Pid and yes, unp is king.

[wuxmedia]

I haven't heard of unp...
[mnemonic]Xtract Zese Vucking Files[/mnemonic]

[pidsley]

DJ covered "autojump" in a #! post -- it's a handy way to mark directories for later so you can easily "cd" into them. I just looked at installing it, and it wanted to pull in 17M of python3.3. No thanks.

I've been using some functions from a blog someone mentioned (I forget where) -- they use symlinks in a hidden directory in your home to accomplish the same thing. I have the functions in my .zsh_aliases file, but they work with bash too.

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export MARKPATH=$HOME/.marks
function go { 
    cd -P "$MARKPATH/$1" 2>/dev/null || echo "no such mark: $1"
}
function mk { 
    mkdir -p "$MARKPATH"; ln -s "$(pwd)" "$MARKPATH/$1"
}
function unmk { 
    rm "$MARKPATH/$1"
}
function mks {
    ls -o "$MARKPATH" | awk '/^lrw/ { print $8,$9,$10 }'
}

When you are in a directory you want to remember, type "mk <name>" and a symlink is created to that directory, with the name you give. Later, just type "go <name>" to go to the marked directory. "mks" lists all the named directories, and "unmk <name>" removes a symlink. The original author called these functions "mark" "jump" "unmark" and "marks" but I'm lazy so I used shorter names.

If you are using zsh, you can add the following functions to your .zshrc to give you tab autocomplete for the "go" and "unmk" functions. There is a way to do this in bash, but I don't have that in front of me right now.

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function _completemarks {
    reply=($(ls $MARKPATH))
}

compctl -K _completemarks go
compctl -K _completemarks unmk

(edit) found the blog with the bash autocomplete functions. http://jeroenjanssens.com/2013/08/16/qu ... -line.html

[rhowaldt]

that is very cool pidsley.

[GekkoP]

Yes, very useful pidsley, thank you.

[DebianJoe]

Very clean answer pidsley. I love it.

[johnraff]

'help alias' doesn't seem to indicate any difference between 'alias' and 'alias -p'.
Something subtle?