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Can't remember the name of that one command line tool? Next time, add a comment!

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.

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  • Nice tip, I will start doing it from now on. I recommend Atuin to keep and sync the shell history, although I don't like its default bindings.

    • 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

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

        • 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).

          • 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.

    • After further inspection, Atuin looks sweet! Looks like they encrypt your history and offer finer-grained search (like dates and things). Great rec, thanks for sharing!

13 comments