4 ms·

The "What's included" section direly needs either clearer/longer descriptions, or at least links to the tools' own pages (if they have them) where their use cas

The "What's included" section direly needs either clearer/longer descriptions, or at least links to the tools' own pages (if they have them) where their use case and usage is explained. I've understood a lot more about (some of) the tools from the comments here than from the page - and I'd likely have skipped over these very useful tools if not for these comments!

sundarurfriend 5y ago
Ok, longer descriptions from the tools' man pages: --- chronic runs a command, and arranges for its standard out and standard error to only be displayed if the command fails (exits nonzero or crashes). If the command succeeds, any extraneous output will be hidden. A common use for chronic is for running a cron job. Rather than trying to keep the command quiet, and having to deal with mails containing accidental output when it succeeds, and not verbose enough output when it fails, you can just run it verbosely always, and use chronic to hide the successful output. --- combine combines the lines in two files. Depending on the boolean operation specified, the contents will be combined in different ways: and Outputs lines that are in file1 if they are also present in file2. not Outputs lines that are in file1 but not in file2. or Outputs lines that are in file1 or file2. xor Outputs lines that are in either file1 or file2, but not in both files. The input files need not be sorted --- ifdata can be used to check for the existence of a network interface, or to get information about the interface, such as its IP address. Unlike ifconfig or ip, ifdata has simple to parse output that is designed to be easily used by a shell script. --- lckdo: Now that util-linux contains a similar command named flock, lckdo is deprecated, and will be removed from some future version of moreutils. --- mispipe: mispipe pipes two commands together like the shell does, but unlike piping in the shell, which returns the exit status of the last command; when using mispipe, the exit status of the first command is returned. Note that some shells, notably bash, do offer a pipefail option, however, that option does not behave the same since it makes a failure of any command in the pipeline be returned, not just the exit status of the first. --- pee: [my own description: `pee cmd1 cmd2 cmd3` takes the data from the standard input, sends copies of it to the commands cmd1, cmd2, and cmd3 (as their stdin), aggregates their outputs and provides that at the standard output.] --- sponge, ts and vipe have been described in other comments in this thread. (And I've also skipped some easier-to-understand ones like errno and isutf8 for the sake of length.) --- zrun: Prefixing a shell command with "zrun" causes any compressed files that are arguments of the command to be transparently uncompressed to temp files (not pipes) and the uncompressed files fed to the command. The following compression types are supported: gz bz2 Z xz lzma lzo [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] ---
- bcbrown 5y ago
  > [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] That's a brilliant way to improve the ergonomics.
- arboles 5y ago
  > [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] Or just use an alias
caymanjim 5y ago
They come with good manpages if you install them. I don't disagree that a little more detail on the linked web page might help people decide whether or not to install, but in keeping with how these are well-behaved oldschool-style Unix commands, they also come with man pages, which is more than I can say for most command line tools people make today (the ones that assume you have Unicode glyphs and color terminals [and don't check if they're being piped or offer --no-color] and don't accept -h/--help and countless other things that kids these days have eschewed).

sundarurfriend 5y ago

Ok, longer descriptions from the tools' man pages: --- chronic runs a command, and arranges for its standard out and standard error to only be displayed if the command fails (exits nonzero or crashes). If the command succeeds, any extraneous output will be hidden. A common use for chronic is for running a cron job. Rather than trying to keep the command quiet, and having to deal with mails containing accidental output when it succeeds, and not verbose enough output when it fails, you can just run it verbosely always, and use chronic to hide the successful output. --- combine combines the lines in two files. Depending on the boolean operation specified, the contents will be combined in different ways: and Outputs lines that are in file1 if they are also present in file2. not Outputs lines that are in file1 but not in file2. or Outputs lines that are in file1 or file2. xor Outputs lines that are in either file1 or file2, but not in both files. The input files need not be sorted --- ifdata can be used to check for the existence of a network interface, or to get information about the interface, such as its IP address. Unlike ifconfig or ip, ifdata has simple to parse output that is designed to be easily used by a shell script. --- lckdo: Now that util-linux contains a similar command named flock, lckdo is deprecated, and will be removed from some future version of moreutils. --- mispipe: mispipe pipes two commands together like the shell does, but unlike piping in the shell, which returns the exit status of the last command; when using mispipe, the exit status of the first command is returned. Note that some shells, notably bash, do offer a pipefail option, however, that option does not behave the same since it makes a failure of any command in the pipeline be returned, not just the exit status of the first. --- pee: [my own description: `pee cmd1 cmd2 cmd3` takes the data from the standard input, sends copies of it to the commands cmd1, cmd2, and cmd3 (as their stdin), aggregates their outputs and provides that at the standard output.] --- sponge, ts and vipe have been described in other comments in this thread. (And I've also skipped some easier-to-understand ones like errno and isutf8 for the sake of length.) --- zrun: Prefixing a shell command with "zrun" causes any compressed files that are arguments of the command to be transparently uncompressed to temp files (not pipes) and the uncompressed files fed to the command. The following compression types are supported: gz bz2 Z xz lzma lzo [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] ---

bcbrown 5y ago
> [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] That's a brilliant way to improve the ergonomics.
arboles 5y ago
> [One super cool thing the man page mentions is that if you create a link named z<programname> eg. zsed, with zrun as the link target, then when you run `zsed XYZ`, zrun will read its own program name, and execute 'zrun sed XYZ' automatically.] Or just use an alias

caymanjim 5y ago

They come with good manpages if you install them. I don't disagree that a little more detail on the linked web page might help people decide whether or not to install, but in keeping with how these are well-behaved oldschool-style Unix commands, they also come with man pages, which is more than I can say for most command line tools people make today (the ones that assume you have Unicode glyphs and color terminals [and don't check if they're being piped or offer --no-color] and don't accept -h/--help and countless other things that kids these days have eschewed).