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Clever trick. Too bad there's no good way to namespace commands. It would be interesting if you could have, for instance: $ mkdir -p /tmp/bin/my $ printf

by Taywee 4y ago

Clever trick. Too bad there's no good way to namespace commands. It would be interesting if you could have, for instance: $ mkdir -p /tmp/bin/my $ printf '%s\n%s\n' '#!/bin/sh' 'echo hello' > /tmp/bin/my/hello $ chmod 755 /tmp/bin/my/hello $ PATH="/tmp/bin:$PATH" $ my/hello hello

eurasiantiger 4y ago
Just add another comma. Of course, this needs some deeper magic to work :) ,my,hello
woodruffw 4y ago
I don't know if I would actually recommend this, but it works: $ touch foo::bar $ chmod +x foo::bar $ ./foo::bar && echo $? It's an empty file so it does nothing, but most shells' lexers should be smart enough to not try and lex '::'. Edit: Forgot to mention, this also works with bash functions and aliases. I'm not sure if POSIX sh will allow it. You can also do things like this (again, not sure I'd recommend it): $ alias +x='chmod +x'
jwilk 4y ago
> mkdir -p /tmp/bin/my This is not a secure way of using /tmp.
- Taywee 4y ago
  Sure, but that's not the point. It's just an illustrative example, and I wanted a short absolute path that is easily recognizable to the reader. I'll fix it, though, to avoid having an example with bad security practices, though. edit: Or I would fix it, but I guess I can't edit it. Oh well.
floren 4y ago
Plan 9 does that, I'm not sure why it never made it into Unix because I always loved it. Your networking-related commands were in `/bin/ip` and you'd run e.g. `ip/ping 1.1.1.1`. If you created the dir `$home/bin/rc/my` and put scripts in it, they would have been runnable as `my/hello` etc like in your example.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Plan 9 also more or less does away with the concept of $PATH in the first place; just union-mount (with `bind`) whatever you want onto `/bin` and call it a day. Yet another thing that would've been great for Unix-likes to pull in (I think some Linuxen can technically do it, but with some limitations).
  - lawl 4y ago
    All linuxen should be able to do that with overlayfs, I think.
- keyle 4y ago
  no matter which kind of twisted idea someone comes up with related to terminals, there is always a guy who chimes in with "in Plan 9 you can do that...". It makes me smile every time. :)
- theblazehen 4y ago
  I've tested it and it works on Linux (bash and zsh), at least for your custom commands
lou1306 4y ago
Ahem, technically there is one way (don't know if it is "good", though): $ export $MY = /tmp/my $ $MY/hello hello
layer8 4y ago
You could (ab)use home directories for that. I.e. place your hello into /home/my, and then you can invoke it as ~my/hello. You even get namespace completion for free after the `~`.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  In zsh you can do "hash -d my=/path/to/my" and then you can use "~my/hello" from anywhere, and it doesn't need to be in /home.
  - account42 4y ago
    > and it doesn't need to be in /home. Neither do home directories.
ianthehenry 4y ago
zsh can do this if you set the PATH_DIRS option, but if I remember right it doesn't autocomplete deeply nested directories, just one level. I made a little tool that dispatches hierarchical commands in a slightly nicer way, with intelligent autocomplete with command descriptions: https://github.com/ianthehenry/sd https://github.com/ianthehenry/sd
gpderetta 4y ago
What about: my hello I.e. only my needs to be in the global namespace and all other commands are resolved by my itself.
- akho 4y ago
  You’d need to set up tab completion for the `my` command. This is more effort than just naming everything `my-foo` — or `,foo`.
  - gpderetta 4y ago
    Good point.
Someone 4y ago
I think shells should support that, allowing you to do $ my hello It would mean tools such as git, microk8s and aws wouldn’t have to implement that “look up first argument, check whether it’s a command I know, and if so, run it” on their own, and would have slightly simpler auto complete configs. It also could mean launching fewer processes (for the case where ‘my’ is a script or executable that looks up the location of ‘hello’ and launches it)
_dain_ 4y ago
https://ianthehenry.com/posts/sd-my-script-directory/ https://ianthehenry.com/posts/sd-my-script-directory/

by Taywee 4y ago

eurasiantiger 4y ago

Just add another comma. Of course, this needs some deeper magic to work :) ,my,hello

woodruffw 4y ago

I don't know if I would actually recommend this, but it works: $ touch foo::bar $ chmod +x foo::bar $ ./foo::bar && echo $? It's an empty file so it does nothing, but most shells' lexers should be smart enough to not try and lex '::'. Edit: Forgot to mention, this also works with bash functions and aliases. I'm not sure if POSIX sh will allow it. You can also do things like this (again, not sure I'd recommend it): $ alias +x='chmod +x'

jwilk 4y ago

> mkdir -p /tmp/bin/my This is not a secure way of using /tmp.

Taywee 4y ago
Sure, but that's not the point. It's just an illustrative example, and I wanted a short absolute path that is easily recognizable to the reader. I'll fix it, though, to avoid having an example with bad security practices, though. edit: Or I would fix it, but I guess I can't edit it. Oh well.

floren 4y ago

Plan 9 does that, I'm not sure why it never made it into Unix because I always loved it. Your networking-related commands were in `/bin/ip` and you'd run e.g. `ip/ping 1.1.1.1`. If you created the dir `$home/bin/rc/my` and put scripts in it, they would have been runnable as `my/hello` etc like in your example.

yellowapple 4y ago
Plan 9 also more or less does away with the concept of $PATH in the first place; just union-mount (with `bind`) whatever you want onto `/bin` and call it a day. Yet another thing that would've been great for Unix-likes to pull in (I think some Linuxen can technically do it, but with some limitations).
- lawl 4y ago
  All linuxen should be able to do that with overlayfs, I think.
keyle 4y ago
no matter which kind of twisted idea someone comes up with related to terminals, there is always a guy who chimes in with "in Plan 9 you can do that...". It makes me smile every time. :)
theblazehen 4y ago
I've tested it and it works on Linux (bash and zsh), at least for your custom commands

lou1306 4y ago

Ahem, technically there is one way (don't know if it is "good", though): $ export $MY = /tmp/my $ $MY/hello hello

layer8 4y ago

You could (ab)use home directories for that. I.e. place your hello into /home/my, and then you can invoke it as ~my/hello. You even get namespace completion for free after the `~`.

Beltalowda 4y ago
In zsh you can do "hash -d my=/path/to/my" and then you can use "~my/hello" from anywhere, and it doesn't need to be in /home.
- account42 4y ago
  > and it doesn't need to be in /home. Neither do home directories.

ianthehenry 4y ago

zsh can do this if you set the PATH_DIRS option, but if I remember right it doesn't autocomplete deeply nested directories, just one level. I made a little tool that dispatches hierarchical commands in a slightly nicer way, with intelligent autocomplete with command descriptions: https://github.com/ianthehenry/sd https://github.com/ianthehenry/sd

gpderetta 4y ago

What about: my hello I.e. only my needs to be in the global namespace and all other commands are resolved by my itself.

akho 4y ago
You’d need to set up tab completion for the `my` command. This is more effort than just naming everything `my-foo` — or `,foo`.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Good point.

Someone 4y ago

I think shells should support that, allowing you to do $ my hello It would mean tools such as git, microk8s and aws wouldn’t have to implement that “look up first argument, check whether it’s a command I know, and if so, run it” on their own, and would have slightly simpler auto complete configs. It also could mean launching fewer processes (for the case where ‘my’ is a script or executable that looks up the location of ‘hello’ and launches it)

_dain_ 4y ago

https://ianthehenry.com/posts/sd-my-script-directory/ https://ianthehenry.com/posts/sd-my-script-directory/