83 pointsby zdw10 hours ago17 comments
  • ahmedfromtunisan hour ago
    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.

    • rzmmm8 minutes ago
      Oh wow I didn't know about this, thank you. The underlying feature is called "readline vi-mode" for folks who want to search more about it.
  • fellertsan hour ago
    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...

    • fainpul6 minutes ago
      Set $WORDCHARS accordingly. In your case, remove / from $WORDCHARS.

      https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/726014

      If you accidentally closed a browser tab: re-open with Ctrl+Shift+T or Cmd+Shift+T

    • figmert10 minutes ago
      > Be careful working CTRL + W into muscle memory though, I've lost count of how many browser tabs I've closed by accident...

      This hurts.

      Also, for the shell, if you do C+w, you can "paste" it back using C+y. Assuming you have not removed that configuration.

    • hejiraan hour ago
      In my terminal it's the exact opposite – Alt-Backspace deletes to the previous space, whereas Ctrl-W deletes to the last non-alphanumeric (such as /). I'm using fish shell in an Alacritty terminal.

      Yeah, pressing Ctrl-W accidentially is a pain sometimes ... but Ctrl-Shift-T in Firefox is a godsend.

      • Aerolfos41 minutes ago
        > Yeah, pressing Ctrl-W accidentially is a pain sometimes ... but Ctrl-Shift-T in Firefox is a godsend.

        Fun fact: despite having absolutely no menu entry for it, and I believe not even a command available with Ctrl+Shift+P, Vscode supports Ctrl+Shift+T to re-open a closed tab. Discovered out of pure muscle memory.

    • gryfftan hour ago
      Ctrl-Shift-T usually brings that tab right back at least
  • hikarudo10 minutes ago
    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

    • fragmedea few seconds ago
      Fwiw, in Bash, alt-shift-3 will prepend the current command with # and start a new command.
  • tkocmathlaan hour ago
    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
      ```
    • internet_points14 minutes ago
      Yes! That one's going in my $PATH. Such a useful use of cat!
  • voidUpdatean hour ago
    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
    • arcanemachineran hour ago
      Make sure to add fzf + shell integration for maximum Ctrl+r goodness.
  • quijoteuniv2 minutes ago
    Guilty as charged
  • amelius24 minutes ago
    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.
  • talkinan hour ago
    > cd -: The classic channel-flipper. Perfect for toggling back and forth.

    And not only cd. Gotta love 'git checkout -'

  • zahlman2 hours ago
    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).

  • chasil2 hours ago
    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.

  • vdm36 minutes ago
    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

  • 28 minutes ago
    undefined
  • Joker_vDan hour ago
    > 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.

    • ZeroGravitasan hour ago
      Vi mode is also available in Claude code and gemini-cli to give some recent examples, and a bunch of other places you might not expect it, as well the more obvious places where code is written.

      Once you get used to it, it is painful to go back.

      • mr_mitm40 minutes ago
        My biggest complaint about the fish shell is the lack of true vi mode. They attempt to emulate it and it works to some degree, but it's no comparison to readline's implementation.
  • faangguyindiaan hour ago
    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.

  • ta890338 minutes ago
    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.

  • tetris112 hours ago
    Never heard of instant truncate, nor `fc`, nor `Esc .`

    Quite a few useful ones

  • aa-jv2 hours ago
    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 ..

    • senectus12 hours ago
      omg >$ CTRL-R<specialthing>

      I could kiss you.. this alone is amazing!

      • fragmedean hour ago
        http://atuin.sh adds a database to store history in and a custom app to use for lookup with added modes to help with searching.
      • aa-jvan hour ago
        Yes indeed, it is very fun to discover this if you don't know it already, it expands your understanding of your shell life immensely, doesn't it?