5 ms·

I wonder if having the search use context like cwd is a win in practice or not. I’ll have to try this out to see. I’ve been using `history | grep` since forev

by gumby 3y ago

I wonder if having the search use context like cwd is a win in practice or not. I’ll have to try this out to see. I’ve been using `history | grep` since forever (usually `history | grep foo | tail -n 5` which has been a single-character alias for more than 30 years). Hard to beat. Since history gives you the line number you can just `!12345` — no need to copy/paste, and works through an ssh connection!

TacticalCoder 3y ago
> I’ve been using `history | grep` since forever... which has been a single-character alias for more than 30 years... I have "history | grep" basically aliased to "h?"
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Ok? Sounds like the person you're replying to said they did too? Why are we ending our statements in question marks.
  - oops 3y ago
    My understanding is that the question mark is part of the alias name.
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago
      Oh that makes sense. I never am completely sure how to deal with the interaction of quote marks at the intersection of code and English
      - TacticalCoder 3y ago
        Yup: that's why I put in quotes... I'm literally using "h?" as a Bash alias, as GP said. It may be a bit weird to use a question mark as part of a Bash alias that said: sorry for the confusion!
        jmholla 3y ago
        For what it's worth, I like to use backticks in these situations (e.g. `h?`). I think it reduces ambiguity a bit.
        gumby 3y ago
        I do this too although it can add ambiguity when writing about the shell!
  - urdbjtdvbg 3y ago
    Why are we ending our questions with full stops!
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago
      Great question?
    - gumby 3y ago
      Because we sheeple kowtow to the periodarchy.. I’ve decided to end sentances with two to try to avoid their ire..
flohofwoe 3y ago
It definitely is (IME, and YMMV of course). Fish shell and the similar zsh-autosuggestion plugin work with directory context, and it almost always suggests the intended autocompletion (not sure why this McFly thingie needs a neural network for this when a per-directory most-recently-used pattern matcher already works perfectly).
- gumby 3y ago
  I’m surprised that it is useful because I often want to use the same commands in different directories! But just to be clear: I didn’t at all write “surprised” as some polite euphemism for “this is dumb”. Clearly people have found it useful for a while and it’s harmless easy for me to collect some empirical data, so I just installed it. Might turn out to be a big win.
  - Conscat 3y ago
    In Fish you can still do that. The cwd is a hint to the candidate sorting algorithm, but not a strict requirement.
- ilaksh 3y ago
  If anything is going to beat fish, it's probably something with a neural network. I wonder if it is actually better.
ktm5j 3y ago
Just curious, how do you grep for foo in the middle of an alias like that? I usually use a function for something like this, or are you using alias colloquially?
- hiccuphippo 3y ago
  Probably a bash function rather than an alias.
- gumby 3y ago
  Yeah, lazy imprecision on my part. A function in my .bashrc .
- ramses0 3y ago
  $ cat ~/bin/f #!/bin/bash if [ "$1" != "" ] ; then find . -type f | grep -v '\.git' | grep -i "$1" else find . -type f | grep -v '\.git' fi
  - oxygen_crisis 3y ago
    Piping `find` through `grep` like that is inefficient, find has robust filtering capabilities you can use without the overhead of spawning subshells with pipes and calling another binary like grep. find . -type f -not -path '*/.git/*' -name "*$1*"
    - ramses0 3y ago
      Hrm... `f foo` vs. `.............................................foo..`
jsr-p 3y ago
I just fzf through history, works like a charm
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  This is by far my favorite fzf feature, I barely use all the other (awesome) things it can do, but I probably use the history thing 100 times a day. It's funny because it's replaced some of what I used to do with aliases and shell config - why remember a command when I can just fzf and pull it up effortlessly ;)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ctur 3y ago
I find it very useful. I made a tool similar to mcfly (before knowing it existed) and use this workflow (`--here`) constantly. Also hostname context and shell session can be useful at times, too, to reconstruct something in the past. https://github.com/chipturner/pxhist https://github.com/chipturner/pxhist

by gumby 3y ago

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> I’ve been using `history | grep` since forever... which has been a single-character alias for more than 30 years... I have "history | grep" basically aliased to "h?"

IggleSniggle 3y ago
Ok? Sounds like the person you're replying to said they did too? Why are we ending our statements in question marks.
- oops 3y ago
  My understanding is that the question mark is part of the alias name.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    Oh that makes sense. I never am completely sure how to deal with the interaction of quote marks at the intersection of code and English
    - TacticalCoder 3y ago
      Yup: that's why I put in quotes... I'm literally using "h?" as a Bash alias, as GP said. It may be a bit weird to use a question mark as part of a Bash alias that said: sorry for the confusion!
      - jmholla 3y ago
        For what it's worth, I like to use backticks in these situations (e.g. `h?`). I think it reduces ambiguity a bit.
        gumby 3y ago
        I do this too although it can add ambiguity when writing about the shell!
- urdbjtdvbg 3y ago
  Why are we ending our questions with full stops!
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    Great question?
  - gumby 3y ago
    Because we sheeple kowtow to the periodarchy.. I’ve decided to end sentances with two to try to avoid their ire..

flohofwoe 3y ago

It definitely is (IME, and YMMV of course). Fish shell and the similar zsh-autosuggestion plugin work with directory context, and it almost always suggests the intended autocompletion (not sure why this McFly thingie needs a neural network for this when a per-directory most-recently-used pattern matcher already works perfectly).

gumby 3y ago
I’m surprised that it is useful because I often want to use the same commands in different directories! But just to be clear: I didn’t at all write “surprised” as some polite euphemism for “this is dumb”. Clearly people have found it useful for a while and it’s harmless easy for me to collect some empirical data, so I just installed it. Might turn out to be a big win.
- Conscat 3y ago
  In Fish you can still do that. The cwd is a hint to the candidate sorting algorithm, but not a strict requirement.
ilaksh 3y ago
If anything is going to beat fish, it's probably something with a neural network. I wonder if it is actually better.

ktm5j 3y ago

Just curious, how do you grep for foo in the middle of an alias like that? I usually use a function for something like this, or are you using alias colloquially?

hiccuphippo 3y ago
Probably a bash function rather than an alias.
gumby 3y ago
Yeah, lazy imprecision on my part. A function in my .bashrc .
ramses0 3y ago
$ cat ~/bin/f #!/bin/bash if [ "$1" != "" ] ; then find . -type f | grep -v '\.git' | grep -i "$1" else find . -type f | grep -v '\.git' fi
- oxygen_crisis 3y ago
  Piping `find` through `grep` like that is inefficient, find has robust filtering capabilities you can use without the overhead of spawning subshells with pipes and calling another binary like grep. find . -type f -not -path '*/.git/*' -name "*$1*"
  - ramses0 3y ago
    Hrm... `f foo` vs. `.............................................foo..`

jsr-p 3y ago

I just fzf through history, works like a charm

epiccoleman 3y ago
This is by far my favorite fzf feature, I barely use all the other (awesome) things it can do, but I probably use the history thing 100 times a day. It's funny because it's replaced some of what I used to do with aliases and shell config - why remember a command when I can just fzf and pull it up effortlessly ;)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ctur 3y ago

I find it very useful. I made a tool similar to mcfly (before knowing it existed) and use this workflow (`--here`) constantly. Also hostname context and shell session can be useful at times, too, to reconstruct something in the past. https://github.com/chipturner/pxhist https://github.com/chipturner/pxhist