I'm all for standardizing tools but when it comes to interactive commands I don't really see the problem to customize for your particular use case. The only dra

I'm all for standardizing tools but when it comes to interactive commands I don't really see the problem to customize for your particular use case. The only drawback is that it makes it a bit more frustrating to use a 3rd party computer but I spend 90% of my time on my own computers where I can easily import my config files. In this particular instance I also don't find braces much more ergonomic at all. I typically navigate the filesystem using tab completion, that means that I'm going to end up with a full path like: mv /foo/bar/some_complicated_file_name.txt | And then at this point I have to backtrack to add the braces at the right location. In this situation I find TFA's solution more straightforward and more elegant. I think a more productive advice would be "don't customize something until you've given existing solution a fair chance". It's easy to go overboard with customization and make it counter productive. It's important to understand the mindset of the people who wrote the tools and whether you're truly facing a limitation or the system or if you're "doing it wrong". For instance I personally love zsh's global aliases and have "G" aliased to "| grep" for instance. So I can write for instance "some_command G something" to grep through the output. I also have "M" bound to "| less". Probably saved me tens of thousands of keystrokes through the years.