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Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)

616 points by zdw

by alberto-m

12 subcomments

One thing I find life-changing is to remap the up arrow so that it does not iterates through all commands, but only those starting with the characters I have already written. So e.g. I can type `tar -`, then the up arrow, and get the tar parameters that worked last time.
In zsh this is configured with
```
    bindkey "^[OA" up-line-or-beginning-search # Up
    bindkey "^[OB" down-line-or-beginning-search # Down
```

by ahmedfromtunis

11 subcomments

Using the terminal becomes much more cozy and comfortable after I activate vim-mode.
A mistake 3 words earlier? No problem: <esc>3bcw and I'm good to go.
Want to delete the whole thing? Even easier: <esc>cc
I can even use <esc>v to open the command inside a fully-fledged (neo)vim instance for more complex rework.
If you use (neo)vim already, this is the best way to go as there are no new shortcuts to learn and memorize.

by fellerts

11 subcomments

CTRL + W usually deletes everything until the previous whitespace, so it would delete the whole '/var/log/nginx/' string in OP's example. Alt + backspace usually deletes until it encounters a non-alphanumeric character.
Be careful working CTRL + W into muscle memory though, I've lost count of how many browser tabs I've closed by accident...

by tkocmathla

4 subcomments

I love this, from a comment on the article:

  He had in his path a script called `\#` that he used to comment out pipe elements like `mycmd1 | \# mycmd2 | mycmd3`. This was how the script was written:
 
  ```
  #!/bin/sh
  cat
  ```

by hikarudo

3 subcomments

One trick I use all the time:
You're typing a long command, then before running it you remember you have to do some stuff first. Instead of Ctrl-C to cancel it, you push it to history in a disabled form.
Prepend the line with # to comment it, run the commented line so it gets added to history, do whatever it is you remembered, then up arrow to retrieve the first command.
$ long_command
<Home, #>
$ #long_command
<Enter>
$ stuff_1 $ stuff_2
<Up arrow a few times>
$ #long_command
<home, del>
$ long_command

by zahlman

3 subcomments

Not a fan of the LLM-flavoured headings, and the tips seem like a real mixed bag (and it'd be nice to give credit specifically to the readline library where appropriate as opposed to the shell), but there are definitely a few things in here I'll have to play around with.
One thing I dislike about brace expansions is that they don't play nicely with tab completion. I'd rather have easy ways to e.g. duplicate the last token (including escaped/quoted spaces), and delete a filename suffix. And, while I'm on that topic, expand variables and `~` immediately (instead of after pressing enter).

by olejorgenb

1 subcomments

Do yourself a favor and upgrade your history search with fzf shell integration (or similar): https://youtu.be/u-qLj4YBry0?t=223 / https://junegunn.github.io/fzf/shell-integration/

by elric

1 subcomments

Regarding history: I have a function in my ZSH config which excludes certain things from the history. Especially things that can break stuff when my sausage fingers CTRL-R the wrong thing

Something like this:

    # Prevent certain strings from appearing in the history
    # Anything starting with a leading space is ignored
    # Anything containing "--force" or "whatever" is ignored
    function zshaddhistory() {
      emulate -L zsh
      if ! [[ "$1" =~ "(^ |--force|whatever)" ]] ; then
          print -sr -- "${1%%$'\n'}"
          fc -p
      else
          return 1
      fi
    }

by voidUpdate

1 subcomments

With ctrl+r, if you press it twice, it will autofill the search with whatever you last searched for. pressing it more will go back through the history. Been using that a lot recently when doing docker stuff. ctrl+r, type the container name, keep going until I get the compose build command. ctrl+r, ctrl+r, repeat until the log command. Then I can just mash ctrl+r to get the build and log commands. Ctrl+r is your friend. ctrl+r

by talkin

1 subcomments

> cd -: The classic channel-flipper. Perfect for toggling back and forth.
And not only cd. Gotta love 'git checkout -'

by nasretdinov

6 subcomments

I'd advise against using sudo !! though since it adds the command to history and then it's very easy to accidentally trigger, running some undesired command as root without any prior confirmation. IMO pressing up, Ctrl-A and typing "sudo " isn't much longer but saves you from running unknown commands as root by accident

by Walf

1 subcomments

The utility of $_ is often voided by tab-completion in the subsequent command, at least in bash. You won't know what it contains, which makes it dangerous, unless you first check it in a way that also carries it forwards:
printf %s\\n "$_"

by kleiba

1 subcomments

Just recently, I came up with this in my .bashrc, basically a "deep cd" command:

    dcd() {
        # If no argument is given, do nothing
        [ -z "$1" ] && return

        # Find the first matching directory under the current directory
        local dir
        dir=$(find . -type d -path "*$1*" -print -quit 2>/dev/null)

        # If a directory was found, cd into it
        [ -n "$dir" ] && cd "$dir"
    }

I thought this would be way too slow for actual use, but I've come to love it.

by amelius

2 subcomments

What confuses me is that Ctrl+Y "yank" means the opposite of what it means in Vim. Certainly does not help with keeping my sanity.

by prodigycorp

3 subcomments

There's one thing you need to only think about once, and has the potential to save you a ton of time: profile your ZSH startup time!
Stuff like NVM or Oh My ZSH will add a few seconds to your shell startup time.

by gchamonlive

1 subcomments

For me the ultimate trick is to open the current prompt in vim with F2 (Ctrl+X ctrl+E seems to work too):

  # Use F2 to edit the current command line:
  autoload -U edit-command-line
  zle -N edit-command-line
  bindkey '^[OQ' edit-command-line  # f2 is ^[OQ; to double check, run `xargs` and then press f2

by 0xcb0

1 subcomments

I've been using a lot of key combinations and I wasn't aware of these two, and I really think these are awesome additions to handling the console. Thank you for showing me. I've only been using it for 22 years, but I haven't come across these :D
`CTRL + U and CTRL + K CTRL + W`
What I like about these key combinations is that they are kind of universal. A lot of programs on Linux and Mac support all these key combinations out of the box. And that's like a game changer in productivity, especially jumping to the start or the end of the line or jumping forward and backward per word is making working only with the keyboard so much more nice. And in editors together so AVY, you can even get a faster flow of jumping around.

by nickjj

0 subcomment

CTRL+L isn't the same as clear btw, it really maps back to `clear -x`.
CTRL+L clears the visible output but you can still scroll up in your buffer to see the rest, clear will clear that scroll up buffer too.
I've written about and demo'd this in https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/clear-vs-ctrl-l-in-your-shell.

by martinflack

0 subcomment

I use `!!` quite a bit to repeat the output of the prior command as an argument.

    # it's in my PATH but can't remember where
    which myscript
    vi `!!`

by tzot

1 subcomments

On scripts that might handle filenames with spaces, I include:
```
    IFS='   ''
    '
```
Hint: the spaces between the first two apostrophes are actually one <Tab>.
This does not affect the already written script (you don't need to press Tab instead of space to separate commands and arguments in the script itself), but by making <Tab> and <LF> be the “internal field separators” will allow globbing with less quoting worries while still allowing for `files=$(ls)` constructs.
Example:
```
    IFS='   ''
    '
    echo hello >/tmp/"some_unique_prefix in tmp"
    cat /tmp/some_unique_prefix*
    fn="My CV.txt"
    echo "I'm alive" >/tmp/$fn
    cat /tmp/$fn
```
Of course this will still fail if there happens to be a filename with <Tab> in it.

by alkh

0 subcomment

This snippet for zsh still has some rough edges but works for the majority of cases. Automatically extends any global alias when space is pressed in zsh. For ex. I have `alias -G G='rg -s'`, so if I type `command | G` it will autoexpand it to `command | rg -s` and so on.

  globalias() {
    local raw word
    # raw last blank-separated token, exactly as typed
    raw=${LBUFFER##\* }
    # shell-parsed last word
    word=${${(z)LBUFFER}[-1]}
    # if user typed \alias, don't expand
    if [[ $raw == \\* ]]; then
        zle self-insert
        return
    fi
    if alias -- ${(q)word} &>/dev/null; then
        zle _expand_alias
        zle expand-word
    fi
    zle self-insert

}

zle -N globalias bindkey ' ' globalias

by MattGrommes

3 subcomments

If only somebody had a lifehack for making me remember all these awesome commands.
If I do something the slow way it's usually because I don't do the operation enough to burn it into my memory, or I got burned by accidentally hitting something close but incorrect once and closed the tab or something.

by ruptwelve

2 subcomments

Maybe not a shell trick per-se but I have been a very big fan of zoxide. It can jump around your common directories. If you have a ~/workspace/projects and you are anywhere and type `cd projects` it will take you to that directory. I never realized how much I got hooked onto it, until I used a system without it.

by fzeindl

2 subcomments

My header on top of every script

            #!/usr/bin/env bash
            set -eEuo pipefail
            # shellcheck disable=SC2034
            DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
            #######################################################

by void-star

1 subcomments

set -o vi
<esc> puts you into vi mode at the cli prompt with all the semantics of the editor.
These carpal tunnel riddled hands can’t be bothered to reach for ctrl or alt let alone arrow keys.

by chasil

0 subcomment

A much larger base for ksh (as a pdksh descendent) is Android. OpenBSD is a tiny community in comparison, although Android has acquired code directly from OpenBSD, notably the C library.
The vi editing mode is always present in ksh, but is optional in dash. If present, the POSIX standard requires that "set -o vi" enable this mode, although other methods to enable it are not prohibited (such as inputrc for bash/readline), and as such is a "universal trick."
The article is relying on some Emacs mode, which is not POSIX.
$_ is not POSIX if I remember correctly.
History in vi mode is easier, just escape, then forward slash (or question mark) and the search term (regex?), then either "n" or "N" to search the direction or its reverse.
I've seen a lot of people who don't like vi mode, but its presence is the most deeply standardized.

by coopykins

0 subcomment

My favourite QoL improvement to any shell I use is to improve the history function(Ctlr+R)I personally like https://github.com/cantino/mcfly

by smcameron

0 subcomment

On the "reset"/"stty sane" trick, I also sometimes have found it necessary to press Ctrl-J rather than RETURN at the end of the command.

by commandersaki

0 subcomment

My favourite trick is either commenting out a whole command or placing a comment at the end of a command to make it easier to find in my persistent history (thanks eliben) [0], using the # character.
I tried this in zsh and it wasn't the default behaviour which immediately made me nope from the shell altogether, among all the other quirks. I've just been using bash for far too long to switch to something different.
[0] https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/06/11/keeping-persistent-...

by exceptione

0 subcomment

I didn't know the `ALT + .` trick to repeat the last argument, but what is even more neat (and not mentioned in the article) is that it cycles through your history. At least it does in my shell.

by fp64

1 subcomments

Here's my favorite tip: If you use bash, you can write bash on your prompt (duh). But this is one of the biggest reasons I stick with bash everywhere, as I am quite comfortable and experienced in bash and sometimes it's just easier to write things like `for i in *.mp3; do ffmpeg -i $i ...` etc. If it's re-usable, I write it to a bash script later.

by thibran

2 subcomments

Its almost ironical that we still use the Terminal - and many use it like in the eighties using Bash - and seem to have forgotten that we should invent a better terminal & shell than doing all the workarounds to handle the quirks of the current systems.

by stormed

0 subcomment

You'll look like the coolest person in the office running `sudo !!`. Another personal favorite of mine is using the --now flag for systemctl to enable & start a service in one command (i.e `systemctl enable --now nginx`)

by Joker_vD

2 subcomments

> The “Works (Almost) Everywhere” Club
> The Backspace Replacements
Also known as "emacs editing mode". Funnily enough, what POSIX mandates is the support for "vi editing mode" which, to my knowledge, almost nobody ever uses. But it's there in most shells, and you can enable it with "set -o vi" in e.g. bash.

by ta8903

2 subcomments

Something that should be mentioned is starting a command with a space doesn't add it to your history in most shells, really useful for one-off commands that you don't want cluttering your history.
Also, increase your `$HISTSIZE` to more than you think you would need, there have been cases where it helped me find some obscure command I ran like 3 years before.

by SoftTalker

1 subcomments

I knew most of these but the $_ variable and "ESC + ." to reference or insert the last argument of the previous command. I can see getting some use out of that, so thanks for posting.

by egorfine

0 subcomment

I'm using bash for over 30 years and I still find new things. Nice.

by arttaboi

0 subcomment

"cd -" is a lifesaver. Thank you so much for this.

by vdm

0 subcomment

Ctrl-r works well at searching character trigrams, which can include space. Trigrams without space work well with auto_resume=substring .
`| sudo tee file` when current user does not have permission to >file

by teh

3 subcomments

Another useful "Emergency exit" is CTRL+Z which stops the process and cannot be intercepted.
It's often faster than hitting CTRL+C and waiting for process cleanup, especially when many resources are used. Then you can do e.g. `kill -9 $(jobs -p)` to kill the stopped tasks.

by williamcotton

1 subcomments

Undo:
```
  Ctrl + _ (Ctrl + underscore)
```

0 subcomment

by tetris11

0 subcomment

Never heard of instant truncate, nor `fc`, nor `Esc .`
Quite a few useful ones

by kwar13

0 subcomment

that was fantastic, learned a couple things after all these years too. alt+. ftw

by annie511266728

0 subcomment

The annoying part is not learning these, it’s remembering them at the right time.
I’ve started keeping a tiny cheatsheet just to avoid rediscovering the same tricks over and over.

by TheServitor

0 subcomment

great list but really overboard on the AI generated persona

by piekvorst

2 subcomments

Is it just me, or is it an LLM language? The article tries very hard to be correct but somehow lacks experience.
I've never used the majority of these tricks for decades, except for brace expansion, process substitutions, and complex redirections.

by rdevilla

0 subcomment

set -o vi

by scuff3d

0 subcomment

Great write up, had to bookmark so I can go through it more later there so much good stuff in there.
For the CTRL + R tip, you can make it even better if you install fzf. Massively improves searching through history. It's worth the install just for that one feature.
Best thing I ever did as a dev was start spending more time in the terminal. Getting familiar with the tools and how they interact makes life so much easier.

by aa-jv

3 subcomments

My favourite shell trick is to comment my code:

  $ some_long_command -with -args -easily -forgotten # thatspecialthing

... Some weeks later ..

  $ CTRL-R<specialthing>

.. finds:

  $ some_long_command -with -args -easily -forgotten # thatspecialthing

Need to see all the special things you've done this week/whenever?

  $ history | grep "\#"

...

Makes for a definite return of sanity ..

by chinadata

0 subcomment

only the people do not use pageup and pagedown is who really know how to use shell

by keybored

1 subcomments

> We’ve all been there.
Close tab.
I ought to migrate away from shell scripting and just keep the shell for interactive use. Unfortunately I have cursed myself by getting competent-ish with P. shell and Bash scripting. Meaning I end up creating maintenance headaches for my future self.
(Echoes of future self: ... so I asked an LLM to migrate my shell scripts to Rust and)
Anyway with the interactive shell stuff. Yeah the I guess Readline features are great. And beyond that I can use the shortcut to open the current line in an editor and get that last mile of interactivity when I want it. I don’t really think I need more than that?
I tried Vim mode in Bash but there didn’t seem to be a mode indicator anywhere. So dropped that.
Edit: I just tested in my Starship.rs terminal: `set -o vi`. Then I got mode indicators. Just with a little lag.

by quijoteuniv

0 subcomment

Guilty as charged

by amelius

1 subcomments

What I hate is that if you start a command with a space it is not recorded in the history. This happens often when copy+pasting commands. I know you can turn it off but still ... this drives me mad.

by faangguyindia

2 subcomments

I just open, agent in tui, and ask it to do what I want and make a plan, i read the plan edit it and run it.
Simple, no need to learn any commandline these days.
I used to use arch and all, and managed many big projects. I find little value in learning new tools anymore, just feed it docs and it generated working plan most of the time
Now I've moved to coding in Haskell, which i find suits me better than wasting my time with cli and exploring what options all these cli tools have.