LQ Poll: What's your favorite Linux terminal trick?

sanflores · 05-16-2019, 05:33 PM

cp file.txt{,.bkp}

Use ir a LOT

greencedar · 05-16-2019, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greencedar View Post
I enjoy:

Code:

~$ sl

Didn't know what you are talking about - not installed by default on my system (Xubuntu something something). Does that count as a "trick"? Because if anything you can install counts as a trick...

Here is the code to install sl:

Code:

sudo apt-get install sl

Hope you enjoy your train ride!

Crippled · 05-16-2019, 05:43 PM

delete terminal

m.a.l.'s pa · 05-16-2019, 08:05 PM

Ctrl+R ("reverse-i-search"), to pull up previously-used commands from bash history. And pasting selected text into the command line with a middle mouse click.

frankbell · 05-16-2019, 08:18 PM

Customizing .bashrc and .vimrc.

This is a simple one that I use frequently.

Code:

ps -A | grep [string]

ChuangTzu · 05-16-2019, 08:27 PM

Tab to autocomplete...real time saver

Nick888 · 05-16-2019, 08:33 PM

I have my .bashrc automatically attach to a tmux session, or create one if it doesn't already exist. It basically creates a persistent terminal session. So if I close my terminal emulator, it'll reopen my terminal session when I open a terminal emulator again. It's really useful when configuring window managers, and when you want to switch between window managers without stopping any currently running jobs. I'll post the code for it later.

tgbauer · 05-16-2019, 08:41 PM

Most useful, especially over ssh, is “screen”
Read the manual and learn basic control keys first

tgbauer · 05-16-2019, 09:03 PM

This is one for when you wish instead of giving you an error and telling you how to correct it, it would just make the correction for you:
[removed]

FabricMan · 05-16-2019, 09:34 PM

I know this is super basic, but piping program output to grep. The day I learned I wouldn't have to wade through a twenty-thousand-line log file in a text editor felt like winning the lottery!

frankbell · 05-16-2019, 09:46 PM

Let me add

Code:

CTRL-r [string]

to search for previous commands.

aveatch · 05-16-2019, 11:08 PM

One that I use often when I want to dump some text in to a new text file quickly.
cat - > test.txt
enter or paste text
CTRL d when done.

use cat - >> test.txt to append the file.

yasheshb · 05-17-2019, 01:06 AM

sort files and directory by size

Code:

du -sk * | sort -n

greencedar · 05-17-2019, 01:10 AM

After copying a command that I want in the terminal:

Quote:

Shift + Insert

will automatically paste the text in the terminal.

Nick888 · 05-17-2019, 01:40 AM

Here's the line from my .bashrc

Code:

# don't automatically attach a tmux session if we're
# in a TTY, since I usually like to run startx from
# the command-line, and you can't do that in tmux
if [ ! $( tty | grep "/dev/tty[1-9]" ) ] && \
        [[ $- = *i* ]] && \
        [ ! $( tmux attach-session -t 0 2>/dev/null) ]; then
    tmux 2>/dev/null
fi

Here are some other tips, some of which are pretty basic, but I didn't know about them when I first started.

* If you use vim, then you can enable vi line editor in bash with "set -o vi".
* In man pages, you can search through them by hitting the slash key, entering a regular expressions,
and hitting enter. You can use n and N to search forward or backward through the results of the search.
* If you have a command with a lot of output, just type !! | less. !! just expands to the previously
executed command, and | less just pipes the output of it into less, a pager.
You can search through the output the same way you can when viewing a man page (IIRC, this is because man actually uses less).
* Heredocs. There are lots of tutorials online on how to use them.
* Sometimes if you accidentally display binary output on the terminal, it'll jumble up all the text
and cause the terminal to act weird. You can fix it by using the "reset" command.