One of my favorite command line tips: you can add ‘comments’ full of keywords to shell commands, which makes searching your command history easier.

> obscure-cmd --with-weird-flags -Qdt # searchable comment keywords

Presumably you’re using something like fzf for history search, but this is still useful without it.

This is especially useful for cli tools with obscure names/flags, or when you can’t remember where a particular log file is.


Some examples from my history:

tail awesomewm logs:

tail -f ~/.cache/awesome/logs -n 2000 # tail follow log awesomewm

fix linux clock drift:

sudo ntpd -qg && sudo hwclock --systohc # fix linux clock time drift

copy ngrok public url to clipboard:

curl -s http://localhost:4040/api/tunnels | jq ".tunnels[0].public_url" | tr -d '"' | tr -d '\n' | xclip -selection clipboard -i # fetch ngrok url uri, copy to clipboard

sign ssh and gpg, then refresh the emacs keychain env:

keychain --agents gpg,ssh --eval id_rsa <some-gpg-id> && emacsclient -e '(keychain-refresh-environment)' # sign ssh,gpg password, refresh emacs env

Another gpg one:

git config commit.gpgsign false # disable gpg signing for this repo

Pacman/pamac commands, like listing orphaned packages:

pacman -Qdt # list orphans
pamac list -o # list orphans

xprop - super useful for debugging window management, for some reason i can never remember what it’s called:

xprop # mouse click window x11 linux describe info client helper whateveritscalled

Some helpers from my clawe project:

bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.sxhkd.bindings/reset-bindings # reset sxhkd bindings
bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.restart/reload # reload clawe

Aliases come to mind as well - in some cases that might be a better fit. I like this because it’s so low-lift.

  • russ@programming.devOP
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    1 year ago

    Interesting, syncing history across machines is pretty cool. While writing this I went looking for my yabai logs helper as an example, but of course, it’s on my other machine, haha

    Security (sharing secrets from that history) comes to mind, so I feel compelled to mention that adding a space before a command is a pattern for preventing it from being stored in history, though I think I had to opt-in to that in my zsh config: setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE

    • Howard Do@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Oh, I didn’t know that, thanks! Do you know any quick way to search and delete password contained commands in the history?

      • russ@programming.devOP
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        1 year ago

        The simple and probably better answer is that you can just vim ~/.zsh_history and search for/delete the lines directly.

        Buuuuut! I wrote zsh command for doing exactly that a few years ago (in my dotfiles, but i’ve pasted it below as well):

        ################################################################################
        # Delete from history via fzf
        ################################################################################
        
        # https://superuser.com/questions/1316668/zsh-bash-delete-specific-lines-from-history
        function delete-command () {
          # Prevent the specified history line from being saved.
          local HISTORY_IGNORE="${(b)$(fc -ln $1 $1)}"
        
          # Write out the history to file, excluding lines that match `$HISTORY_IGNORE`.
          fc -W
        
          # Dispose of the current history and read the new history from file.
          fc -p "$HISTFILE" "$HISTSIZE" "$SAVEHIST"
        
          # TA-DA!
          print "Deleted '$HISTORY_IGNORE' from history."
        }
        
        function pick_from_history () {
          history | fzf --tac --tiebreak=index | perl -ne 'm/^\s*([0-9]+)/ and print "$1"'
        }
        
        function delete_from_history () {
          delete-command "$(pick_from_history)"
        }
        

        It uses fzf to filter and select a command to delete. It’s cool but might be slow b/c you’re doing it one at a time. It also may depend on your zsh config (i think the history command i’m using there comes from ohmyzsh, but i’m not too sure).

        • Howard Do@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I tried it, it’s nice, thank you man! I’m on zsh, so I have to add history 0 in pick_from_history tho. It would be nicer if it allows continuous deletion and not need to rerun every time. Btw, even when I delete it locally it wouldn’t delete already synced history on Atuin, I guess I’ll take a look at that later.