Every time someone brings this up, I think "oh right, I could do that" and then immediately forget. Especially if you can type quickly, it's easier to just "drive straight ahead" with the command you want, than add another "mental branch" to interrupt the flow. For the same reason I'll often Ctrl+C and start again instead of trying to backspace and correct.
Rather than a sense of "cool" or "useful" somehow I end up just feeling despair at how organically convoluted it is to determine what something on a command-line really does. To be fair, I've always been biased towards "only the simplest scripts should be in shell languages."
This also adds an intriguing new dimensions to reviewing/verifying shell commands as benign and correct... How long until LLMs start (ab)using the trick in little requests they want me to approve?
I’ve been burnt before using ! and forgetting what command I typed previously, thus invoking the wrong command line.
!! is handy for the sudo example, but beyond that, I tend to prefer pressing the up arrow to cycle through the history rather than picking the first item. Eg:
!ssh
vs
ssh[up]
It’s the same number of key strokes but less error prone
! calls are vital for your sanity if you ever do remote support
trying to write shell commands on a hypervisor console window within a remote session on a jump box is excruciatingly laggy and annoying, and that's assuming your remote session connection to the client is behaving well in the first place
I have a script that does virsh send-key of whatever I need to send. In my specific case the motivation was the mismatch between my keyboard layout and the keyboard in the VMs, so I couldn't send M-# or even C-... into the VNC console.
I'm way too paranoid to ever use "!". I want to see the command I'm sending.
sigh The usability of ! versus Ctrl+R in a shell is pretty much the same as the usability of ed versus vi, or moving files around using cp/mv versus using Midnight Commander or the like: in the first case, you have to accurately remember the past (which for many people is pretty difficult); in the second case, you don't have to, because you always have an immediate view of the state of the system and the preview of the effect you're about to incur.
And yeah, I've done editing with ed; it definitely beats "cat >file.txt" and copying parts around with head/tail and retyping the corrections manually, sure, and it works in every environment that can take line-oriented input from the user (so, literally everywhere), but that's about as much praise as I can give it.
> in the first case, you have to accurately remember the past
Right, as a matter of (relatively trivial) cybernetics between man and machine, it rests on the weaker parts of the human.
TBF, it'd make a lot more sense if every command on screen (or given the timescale perhaps teletype paper prinout) was already labeled with the necessary number.
Not knowing what command you are doing before you submit it is poor design. There are alternative ways to access old commands where you can see the actual command you are about to run before you submit it. The physical teletype era is over.
Everyone need be aware, bash uses emac extensions by default. As I refuse to use emacs, I therefore refuse to use these extensions in bash!
In as most sensible people use vi, don't taint yourself by touching this foul and evil emacs magic. Being known as an emacs user could cost you a job, shorten your career, or even cause
rifts with family and friends.
Instead my friends, if you must use such bash shenanigans, switch it to vi extensions. You'll feel better about yourself, stand taller, and be a better human being as a result.
Well, Emacs shenanigans are why I use Bash. Also, I last had a day job five years ago, I don't have anything that looks like a career, and well you're right about some of the family and friends.
If you really want to be lazy, use a terminal file manager (I prefer lf[0]) it helps avoiding the cd && ls dance. That way, your history only contains commands you actually would want to rerun.
This also adds an intriguing new dimensions to reviewing/verifying shell commands as benign and correct... How long until LLMs start (ab)using the trick in little requests they want me to approve?
There's enough complexity in the language spec that most people stick with a (fairly shared) subset.
Bash can be very powerful, but IMHO there's a certain point where I find it saner to accomplish the same thing via Python.
!! is handy for the sudo example, but beyond that, I tend to prefer pressing the up arrow to cycle through the history rather than picking the first item. Eg:
vs It’s the same number of key strokes but less error pronetrying to write shell commands on a hypervisor console window within a remote session on a jump box is excruciatingly laggy and annoying, and that's assuming your remote session connection to the client is behaving well in the first place
I'm way too paranoid to ever use "!". I want to see the command I'm sending.
And yeah, I've done editing with ed; it definitely beats "cat >file.txt" and copying parts around with head/tail and retyping the corrections manually, sure, and it works in every environment that can take line-oriented input from the user (so, literally everywhere), but that's about as much praise as I can give it.
Right, as a matter of (relatively trivial) cybernetics between man and machine, it rests on the weaker parts of the human.
TBF, it'd make a lot more sense if every command on screen (or given the timescale perhaps teletype paper prinout) was already labeled with the necessary number.
PS1="(\\!) \[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ "
as a full working example
and yeah ^r works, though i still type a few chars and ^p till i get the match. history-search-backwards in your inputrc, iirc
``` mkcd() { mkdir -p -- "$*" && cd -- "$*" } ```
In as most sensible people use vi, don't taint yourself by touching this foul and evil emacs magic. Being known as an emacs user could cost you a job, shorten your career, or even cause rifts with family and friends.
Instead my friends, if you must use such bash shenanigans, switch it to vi extensions. You'll feel better about yourself, stand taller, and be a better human being as a result.
Be safe.
You are a soothsayer!
0: https://github.com/gokcehan/lf