teammatt3 wrote: But you

Abhishek Reddy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:39:29 +0000

teammatt3 wrote: But you bring up the portability of dot files. Every shell script I have could be put into .bashrc as an alias, right? That seems like a better idea because I could just bring over my bashrc file and not my whole bin directory.

Exactly. If it's something you're interesting in porting to multiple systems, certainly try setting it up as an alias.

Just found out this one, "cd

teammatt3 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:22:38 +0000

Just found out this one, "cd -". If you start in /root and change dirs over to /home/matt, cd - will take you to /root. Typing it again will take you back to /home/matt. It's like a back/forward button. I haven't really used it, but it might be useful.

I don't use aliases very much, I write shell scripts (I always forget the syntax for aliases). But you bring up the portability of dot files. Every shell script I have could be put into .bashrc as an alias, right? That seems like a better idea because I could just bring over my bashrc file and not my whole bin directory.

JeevesBond wrote: Hehe, I

Abhishek Reddy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:04:33 +0000

JeevesBond wrote: Hehe, I read this as: 'I carry out highly repetitious, cynical tasks.'

Like incrementally posting more and more depressed comments on the end of the world is nigh forums.

I do that too.

JeevesBond wrote: Or repeatedly bashing ones head against the keyboard.

I see what you did there.

JeevesBond wrote: More on topic (about aliases), I discovered these the other day myself. They allow really long commands to be shortened to single words

Definitely one of the most useful features. My .bashrc is filled with aliases to the point that I'm sometimes uncomfortable in foreign shells without my customisations. Thankfully dotfiles are easily portable!

In the other 40% of the time

JeevesBond — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:45:50 +0000

In the other 40% of the time I carry out highly repetitious, cyclical tasks.

Hehe, I read this as: 'I carry out highly repetitious, cynical tasks.'

Like incrementally posting more and more depressed comments on the end of the world is nigh forums. Or repeatedly bashing ones head against the keyboard. That's when hating the world really becomes useful.

But seriously, I had totally forgotten about those search commands, I'd actually started to think I was just dreaming of their existence! More on topic (about aliases), I discovered these the other day myself. They allow really long commands to be shortened to single words, for example:

alias checkouthead='cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal checkout drupal'

Gets rid of all the tedious typing to checkout Drupal HEAD, reducing it to: checkouthead. These can be switched on/added in ~/.bashrc

That's pretty much all I

Abhishek Reddy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:50:36 +0000

That's pretty much all I need for the majority of my time in the command line, too. Say, 60%.

In the other 40% of the time I carry out highly repetitious, cyclical tasks. Like incrementally building, testing, and rebuilding a program. Or repeatedly shutting down, reconfiguring, and starting up a server. That's when the fancy shortcuts really become useful.

I just like being able to

Megan — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:00:31 +0000

I just like being able to tab to complete the directory path and arrow up to access recent commands!

Input history. C-r to

Abhishek Reddy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:52:28 +0000

Input history. C-r to search backwards incrementally and C-s to search forwards. In most long sessions in the command line, I'm working on an iterative task, say repeatedly starting and stopping a server, or building a program, etc. The commands are too transient to warrant aliasing or scripting because I probably won't want in future sessions. But I don't want to keep tapping the up-key for each command -- or worse, re-type it.

Of course, bash does remember inputs even in a future session, which can be handy. My rule is that if I find myself resorting to the input history for a command in more than two successive sessions, I want it in a script or alias.

The other big feature along the same lines is history expansions. !! refers to the previous command, !-n refers to the nth command back, !$ refers to the last argument of the previous command, and so on. Makes it easy to string together a command like so:

$ ./configure --some-long-options=inconvenient --we-would-hate-retyping=this
  [much output]
$ make some-target
$ make another-target
  [error due to incompatible library]
$ aptitude install new-library
$ !./conf? && !?some? && !?another?
  [expands to ./configure... && make some-target && make another-target]

More on these in the Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History.

...and rm . doesn't remove

pr0gr4mm3r — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:30:38 +0000

...and rm *.* doesn't remove all files on the filesystem. There are a lot of files with no extension, and hence no '.'.

cd \ What's this, a

JeevesBond — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:54:30 +0000

cd \\'

What's this, a backslash? Directory separators aren't backslashes!

cd \ rm .

greg — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:26:33 +0000

cd \\
rm *.*