5 ms·

Saner Alternative Unix Commands

48 points by ibraheemdev 5y ago

ibraheemdev 5y ago
I created this small list of alternative Unix commands that do something better than existing tools. Many of these (ripgrep, fzf) have gotten very popular recently. Let me know if you know of any others that I missed!
- peanball 5y ago
  Curlie[1], as more feature complete and faster alternative to httpie. [1]: https://curlie.io https://curlie.io
- thu2111 5y ago
  Thanks! This is super helpful! I knew about and use exa and fzf but the others are new to me.
oweiler 5y ago
My two favorite tools: lsd, a fast alternative to exa https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd mcfly, reverse-search on steroids https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/cantino/mcfly
- ibraheemdev 5y ago
  I haven't heard of McFly, it looks really awesome, I'll definitely add it! I'm also curious, why do you like lsd over exa?
  - oweiler 5y ago
    I've used exa in the past but lsd is more focused (basically a drop in replacement for ls) and a lot faster.
- operator-name 5y ago
  > McFly's suggestions are prioritized in real time with a small neural network. Very interesting, at least the first command line tool I've seen that does this. I wonder how it compares to just fzf.
gumby 5y ago
It's always a dilemma: add these tools and become more productive or stick to the standard ones because you could be on a machine that only has the "standard" ones (base distro or even just POSIX). I finally decided that having the "better" (for me) tools was the better way to go; now that it's more common to deploy on "cattle" it's not so hard to look for accidental dependencies.
- kaba0 5y ago
  I have created aliases to the new tools, so I get to use the new tool and most flags are the same.
emptyparadise 5y ago
What was that tool that would print JSON as a list of greppable declarations? I forgot the name but I liked it a lot more than jq back in the day.
- lafrenierejm 5y ago
  You're probably thinking of https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    This is it.
conradludgate 5y ago
Instead of curl or even httpie, I use xh[0]. It builds on a lot of the same features as httpie, but is faster and offers a --curl flag to translate into a curl command that you can share with colleagues. [0]: https://github.com/ducaale/xh https://github.com/ducaale/xh
pdimitar 5y ago
Didn't know about `xh` and `curlie`, thanks! (Apparently `xh` replaces `ht` because its repo redirects to `xh`.)

48 points by ibraheemdev 5y ago

I created this small list of alternative Unix commands that do something better than existing tools. Many of these (ripgrep, fzf) have gotten very popular recently. Let me know if you know of any others that I missed!

peanball 5y ago
Curlie[1], as more feature complete and faster alternative to httpie. [1]: https://curlie.io https://curlie.io
thu2111 5y ago
Thanks! This is super helpful! I knew about and use exa and fzf but the others are new to me.

oweiler 5y ago

My two favorite tools: lsd, a fast alternative to exa https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd mcfly, reverse-search on steroids https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/cantino/mcfly

ibraheemdev 5y ago
I haven't heard of McFly, it looks really awesome, I'll definitely add it! I'm also curious, why do you like lsd over exa?
- oweiler 5y ago
  I've used exa in the past but lsd is more focused (basically a drop in replacement for ls) and a lot faster.
operator-name 5y ago
> McFly's suggestions are prioritized in real time with a small neural network. Very interesting, at least the first command line tool I've seen that does this. I wonder how it compares to just fzf.

gumby 5y ago

It's always a dilemma: add these tools and become more productive or stick to the standard ones because you could be on a machine that only has the "standard" ones (base distro or even just POSIX). I finally decided that having the "better" (for me) tools was the better way to go; now that it's more common to deploy on "cattle" it's not so hard to look for accidental dependencies.

kaba0 5y ago
I have created aliases to the new tools, so I get to use the new tool and most flags are the same.

emptyparadise 5y ago

What was that tool that would print JSON as a list of greppable declarations? I forgot the name but I liked it a lot more than jq back in the day.

lafrenierejm 5y ago
You're probably thinking of https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  This is it.

conradludgate 5y ago

Instead of curl or even httpie, I use xh[0]. It builds on a lot of the same features as httpie, but is faster and offers a --curl flag to translate into a curl command that you can share with colleagues. [0]: https://github.com/ducaale/xh https://github.com/ducaale/xh

pdimitar 5y ago

Didn't know about `xh` and `curlie`, thanks! (Apparently `xh` replaces `ht` because its repo redirects to `xh`.)