3 ms·

My personal method is to type "ffmpeg" and then hit Ctrl+R repeatedly until I make it to the last time I used it to do what I want to do again now, and then ada

by p4bl0 4y ago

My personal method is to type "ffmpeg" and then hit Ctrl+R repeatedly until I make it to the last time I used it to do what I want to do again now, and then adapt the command from history to my current needs. It's not very efficient, but I don't feel it needs to be, and it requires no particular setup (except setting Bash to keep history forever but that's something useful I would do anyway for other use cases).

tempodox 4y ago
By creating/editing `~/.inputrc` you can customize history navigation in bash. Enter `help bind` in bash to see an overview or consult [1]. A line like "\e[A": history-search-backward only shows history entries that start with the current text when you hit cursor-up, for instance. [1] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/html_node/Readline-Init-File.html https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/html_...
BeetleB 4y ago
Ctrl+R combined with fzf is your friend :-)
- michaelcampbell 4y ago
  Amen to that, I use almost nothing else these days except for when I have a new bespoke command I've never typed before. Even then fzf helps since I rarely am typing something COMPLETELY new.
xenodium 4y ago
Ah, yes. This served me fairly well for some time. However, I also needed to remember the actual tool I used for the job. Was it ffmpeg? ffprobe? gifsicle? was it ImageMagick's convert? Not too bad if these are the only tools, but I also use pandoc, BluetoothConnector, pdftotext, qpdf, multiple AppleScripts, qrencode, system_profiler, fb-rotate, duti, sips, git... Bash history also remembers failed attempts, so I need to filter those out as I recall the successful one... Wrapping the winning command with a memorable function makes it a bit easier for me to recall the right incantation via fuzzy searching. For example: "set default" (resolves to dwim-shell-commands-macos-set-default-app) vs "duti" (which I can never remember).
gumby 4y ago
Why not do `history | grep ffmpeg`? Each line will be prefixed with its place in the history ("445 ffmpeg --whatever") and you can just press `!445` to run it.
m463 4y ago
I think control-r quietly automates a good portion of what I do. As a matter of fact, I automatically (subconsciously) type control-r before every command. I think I've only ever typed this command once: git log --graph --decorate --oneline --all
- p4bl0 4y ago
  Ah, this precise command is aliased as `git lol` (Log One Line) for me!
Y_Y 4y ago
I've found this is much more efficient if I add a comment at the end of the command describing what it does, then my C-r search can find that description, rather than just, say, any command in invoking some particular executable.
dceddia 4y ago
If you haven’t run across Atuin yet you might like it! https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin It stores shell history in a SQLite database and you can use Ctrl+R to fuzzy search it.

by p4bl0 4y ago

tempodox 4y ago

By creating/editing `~/.inputrc` you can customize history navigation in bash. Enter `help bind` in bash to see an overview or consult [1]. A line like "\e[A": history-search-backward only shows history entries that start with the current text when you hit cursor-up, for instance. [1] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/html_node/Readline-Init-File.html https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/html_...

BeetleB 4y ago

Ctrl+R combined with fzf is your friend :-)

michaelcampbell 4y ago
Amen to that, I use almost nothing else these days except for when I have a new bespoke command I've never typed before. Even then fzf helps since I rarely am typing something COMPLETELY new.

xenodium 4y ago

Ah, yes. This served me fairly well for some time. However, I also needed to remember the actual tool I used for the job. Was it ffmpeg? ffprobe? gifsicle? was it ImageMagick's convert? Not too bad if these are the only tools, but I also use pandoc, BluetoothConnector, pdftotext, qpdf, multiple AppleScripts, qrencode, system_profiler, fb-rotate, duti, sips, git... Bash history also remembers failed attempts, so I need to filter those out as I recall the successful one... Wrapping the winning command with a memorable function makes it a bit easier for me to recall the right incantation via fuzzy searching. For example: "set default" (resolves to dwim-shell-commands-macos-set-default-app) vs "duti" (which I can never remember).

gumby 4y ago

Why not do `history | grep ffmpeg`? Each line will be prefixed with its place in the history ("445 ffmpeg --whatever") and you can just press `!445` to run it.

m463 4y ago

I think control-r quietly automates a good portion of what I do. As a matter of fact, I automatically (subconsciously) type control-r before every command. I think I've only ever typed this command once: git log --graph --decorate --oneline --all

p4bl0 4y ago
Ah, this precise command is aliased as `git lol` (Log One Line) for me!

Y_Y 4y ago

I've found this is much more efficient if I add a comment at the end of the command describing what it does, then my C-r search can find that description, rather than just, say, any command in invoking some particular executable.

dceddia 4y ago

If you haven’t run across Atuin yet you might like it! https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin It stores shell history in a SQLite database and you can use Ctrl+R to fuzzy search it.