4 ms·

Show HN: Hacker News without leaving your terminal

I put this together since I find myself switching away from the terminal to see if anything new popped up in HN. There might be similar ones out there, didn't bother looking. It was a quick experiment, which might end up with a few more features.

makecheck 15y ago
Pretty neat. Note that in order to work on Mac OS X, the word "wget" should change to "curl" in the script. (Otherwise it works exactly as-is.)
- jeybalachandran 15y ago
  Great catch, I have wget installed via brew so overlooked that, I'll create a patch shortly.
spatten 15y ago
When you say "If you're terminal is awesome, you can ⌘-click on the links to open them in a browser.", what kind of awesome do I need? I'm running plain old terminal on OS X. (oh, and not to be picky, but that should be "your", not "you're")
- brandur 15y ago
  iTerm2 for OS X will do this: http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
- Groxx 15y ago
  They probably mean iTerm2 (which is a definite upgrade, worth it if you haven't tried it)
- xdissent 15y ago
  Plain old terminal works for me, but you have to ⌘-double-click.
- kip_ 15y ago
  I'm running plain old terminal on OS X Lion and if I hold down the ⌘-key and double click, the link in the terminal opens in my default browser.
- makecheck 15y ago
  MacTerm does this, for one. http://www.macterm.net/ http://www.macterm.net/
dangrossman 15y ago
I tried it on CentOS (RHEL) 5.6 [admin@gold admin]# hackernews sed: invalid option -- E [admin@gold admin]# sed --version GNU sed version 4.1.5
- lastsurvivor 15y ago
  same error here.
- nzmsv 15y ago
  Changing "sed -E" to "sed -r" and all instances of "==" to "=" makes this script run on my Debian system. Unfortunately, it leaves the terminal blue when it is done.
  - makecheck 15y ago
    If you add a line like the following to the end of the script, any color changes should be undone: echo "\033[0m" Also, I believe Debian's /bin/sh is "dash" whereas it is "bash" on most other systems. You could change your copy of the script's header to use "/bin/bash" instead of "sh" (assuming that bash is installed too), which is easier than fixing equal-signs and such. As far as the original code is concerned, using "perl" may be slightly more portable than "sed -E".
  - jeybalachandran 15y ago
    There is a patch in master to support both Debian and Mac OS X. OS X doesn't use GNU sed which was the source of the problem.
tuananh 15y ago
kind of cool but in the end, you need to open your browser anyway !!
- makecheck 15y ago
  Here is one way to force your browser to open a URL by entering a terminal command: echo 'open location "http://my.domain.com/some/file.html"' | osascript
  - fceccon 15y ago
    You can also open an url with: open http://my.domain.com/some/file.html
burgerbrain 15y ago
Not to be rude, but what does this get me over elinks?
xdissent 15y ago
You're altering the terminal colors without resetting them. You should output a reset code after you're done (\033[0m IIRC?) or (drastically) issue `reset`. Although, a blue terminal is kind of a nice change.
- jeybalachandran 15y ago
  Fixed, thanks!
Nic0 15y ago
I used pkrumins ncurses hacker-top program, it's nice. https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top Sometime it has a bug to retrieve news, and I fixed it. https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top Certainly a nice way to follow HN, the only advantage with the website, it to have gray links on already visited links. That's mainly why I don't use it anymore.
- klapinat0r 15y ago
  A "solution" to this could be a small local cache or sqlite db. Say you use Chrome, then you could have a cronjob which checks your history (given you're not in cognito) sqlite db for links in your last `$ hackernews` run. Not saying it's an adequate way to solve it, but it certainly is a hack ;)
makecheck 15y ago
Here's a couple of edits that will pull colors from the 256-color (XTerm) palette and make the titles bold: blue_highlight=`echo "\033[0;38;5;68m"` brown_highlight=`echo "\033[0;1;38;5;202m"` . . . . . . (end of script) echo "\033[0m"
- jeybalachandran 15y ago
  Thanks, fixed in master. Also updated so only uses colors via a -c argument.
lightyrs 15y ago
This is dangerously good. Thanks?
JacobIrwin 15y ago
Cool.. Here I was thinking the HN web app was as simple and plain as I could view the feeds..
zx2c4 15y ago
Dear Sir, You have committed an egregious atrocity: you parse XML with a regex. Please read this classic post: http://goo.gl/wPtKX http://goo.gl/wPtKX Thank you, Internet
- jeybalachandran 15y ago
  I was counting on someone pointing me to that. Well aware of it and appreciate the reality check. I did this as a quick-and-dirty solution, I haven't tried parsing XML in shell, ever. Do you have suggestions?

makecheck 15y ago

Pretty neat. Note that in order to work on Mac OS X, the word "wget" should change to "curl" in the script. (Otherwise it works exactly as-is.)

jeybalachandran 15y ago
Great catch, I have wget installed via brew so overlooked that, I'll create a patch shortly.

spatten 15y ago

When you say "If you're terminal is awesome, you can ⌘-click on the links to open them in a browser.", what kind of awesome do I need? I'm running plain old terminal on OS X. (oh, and not to be picky, but that should be "your", not "you're")

brandur 15y ago
iTerm2 for OS X will do this: http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home
Groxx 15y ago
They probably mean iTerm2 (which is a definite upgrade, worth it if you haven't tried it)
xdissent 15y ago
Plain old terminal works for me, but you have to ⌘-double-click.
kip_ 15y ago
I'm running plain old terminal on OS X Lion and if I hold down the ⌘-key and double click, the link in the terminal opens in my default browser.
makecheck 15y ago
MacTerm does this, for one. http://www.macterm.net/ http://www.macterm.net/

dangrossman 15y ago

I tried it on CentOS (RHEL) 5.6 [admin@gold admin]# hackernews sed: invalid option -- E [admin@gold admin]# sed --version GNU sed version 4.1.5

lastsurvivor 15y ago
same error here.
nzmsv 15y ago
Changing "sed -E" to "sed -r" and all instances of "==" to "=" makes this script run on my Debian system. Unfortunately, it leaves the terminal blue when it is done.
- makecheck 15y ago
  If you add a line like the following to the end of the script, any color changes should be undone: echo "\033[0m" Also, I believe Debian's /bin/sh is "dash" whereas it is "bash" on most other systems. You could change your copy of the script's header to use "/bin/bash" instead of "sh" (assuming that bash is installed too), which is easier than fixing equal-signs and such. As far as the original code is concerned, using "perl" may be slightly more portable than "sed -E".
- jeybalachandran 15y ago
  There is a patch in master to support both Debian and Mac OS X. OS X doesn't use GNU sed which was the source of the problem.

tuananh 15y ago

kind of cool but in the end, you need to open your browser anyway !!

makecheck 15y ago
Here is one way to force your browser to open a URL by entering a terminal command: echo 'open location "http://my.domain.com/some/file.html"' | osascript
- fceccon 15y ago
  You can also open an url with: open http://my.domain.com/some/file.html

burgerbrain 15y ago

Not to be rude, but what does this get me over elinks?

xdissent 15y ago

You're altering the terminal colors without resetting them. You should output a reset code after you're done (\033[0m IIRC?) or (drastically) issue `reset`. Although, a blue terminal is kind of a nice change.

jeybalachandran 15y ago
Fixed, thanks!

Nic0 15y ago

I used pkrumins ncurses hacker-top program, it's nice. https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top Sometime it has a bug to retrieve news, and I fixed it. https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top Certainly a nice way to follow HN, the only advantage with the website, it to have gray links on already visited links. That's mainly why I don't use it anymore.

klapinat0r 15y ago
A "solution" to this could be a small local cache or sqlite db. Say you use Chrome, then you could have a cronjob which checks your history (given you're not in cognito) sqlite db for links in your last `$ hackernews` run. Not saying it's an adequate way to solve it, but it certainly is a hack ;)

makecheck 15y ago

Here's a couple of edits that will pull colors from the 256-color (XTerm) palette and make the titles bold: blue_highlight=`echo "\033[0;38;5;68m"` brown_highlight=`echo "\033[0;1;38;5;202m"` . . . . . . (end of script) echo "\033[0m"

jeybalachandran 15y ago
Thanks, fixed in master. Also updated so only uses colors via a -c argument.

lightyrs 15y ago

This is dangerously good. Thanks?

JacobIrwin 15y ago

Cool.. Here I was thinking the HN web app was as simple and plain as I could view the feeds..

zx2c4 15y ago

Dear Sir, You have committed an egregious atrocity: you parse XML with a regex. Please read this classic post: http://goo.gl/wPtKX http://goo.gl/wPtKX Thank you, Internet

jeybalachandran 15y ago
I was counting on someone pointing me to that. Well aware of it and appreciate the reality check. I did this as a quick-and-dirty solution, I haven't tried parsing XML in shell, ever. Do you have suggestions?