A while ago I made a tiny function in my ~/.zshrc to download a video from the link in my clipboard. I use this nearly every day to share videos with people without forcing them to watch it on whatever site I found it. What’s a script/alias that you use a lot?
# Download clipboard to tmp with yt-dlp
tmpv() {
cd /tmp/ && yt-dlp "$(wl-paste)"
}
I wrote a script called
please
. You inputplease
followed by any other command (e.g.please git clone
,please wget blahblah
) and a robotic voice will say “affirmative,” then the command will run, and when it completes, the robotic voice reads out the exit code (e.g. “completed successfully” or “failed with status 1” etc.)This is useful for when you have a command that takes a long time and you want to be alerted when it’s finished. And it’s a gentleman.
please
share the script?It’s full of random shit I put in as a joke, but here it is. You can use
please -s
to get lightly roasted when your command fails.spoiler
#!/bin/bash # announces success or failure of task if ! command -v "spd-say" > /dev/null then echo "spd-say must be installed." exit -1 fi VOLUME=0 SERIOUS=1 FINISH_ONLY=0 if [ $# -ge 2 ] then if [ $1 == "-i" ] then # parse volume from command line VOLUME=$2 shift 2 fi fi spd-say -C # force stop speech synthesizer killall -q speech-dispatcher # androgynous voice # __sayfn="spd-say -i -80 -t female3" # deep voice __sayfn="spd-say -i $VOLUME -r -10 -p -100 -t male3" function _sayfn { $__sayfn "$@" 2>/dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ] then $__sayfn "$@" fi } if [ $# -eq 0 ] || [ "$1" == "--help" ] then _sayfn "Directive required." echo "Usage: please [-i volume] [-s|--serious] [-f|--finish] <command...>" echo " please [-i volume] --say text" echo " -i: volume in range -100 to +100" echo " --serious, -s: no silliness. Serious only. (Just kidding.)" echo " --finish, -f: do not announce start" exit -2 fi # threading issue sleep 0.001 if [ $# -ge 2 ] then if [ $1 == "--say" ] then # _sayfn the given line shift 1 _sayfn "$@" exit 0 fi if [ $1 == "--serious" ] || [ $1 == "-s" ] then shift 1 SERIOUS=0 fi if [ $1 == "--finish" ] || [ $1 == "-f" ] then shift 1 FINISH_ONLY=1 fi fi i=$(shuf -n1 -e "." "!") # inflection on voice if [ "$FINISH_ONLY" -eq 0 ] then if [ "$SERIOUS" -eq 0 ] then # startup lines (randomized for character) _sayfn -r -5 -x ".<break time=\"60ms\"/>$(shuf -n1 -e \ 'Proceeding As Directed...' \ 'By your command...' \ 'By your command...' \ 'By the power ov greyskaall!' \ 'By your command,line...' \ 'As you wish...' \ 'Stand by.' \ 'Engaged...' \ 'Initializing...' \ 'Activating' \ 'At once!' \ "Post Haste$i" \ 'it shall be done immediately' \ 'Very well.' \ 'It shall be so.' \ "righty-o$i" \ "Affirmative$i" \ "Acknowledged$i" \ "Confirmed$i" \ )" else _sayfn -r -5 -x ".<break time=\"60ms\"/>Engaged..." fi if [ $? -ne 0 ] then _sayfn "Speech engine failure." echo "Failed to run speech engine. Cancelling task." exit -3 fi fi if ! command -v "$1" > /dev/null then # _sayfn a little faster because this exits fast. _sayfn -r +10 "Unable to comply? invalid command." >&2 echo "$1: command not found." exit -4 fi eval " $@" result=$? i=$(shuf -n1 -e "," "!" "?") # inflection on voice transition=$(shuf -n1 -e "; error" ", with error" "; status") taskname=$(shuf -n1 -e "task" "task" "command" "objective" "mission" "procedure" "routine") errtext=$(shuf -n1 -e "Task_failed" "Task_failed" "Task_resulted_in_failure" "Procedure_terminated_in_an_error" "An_error_has_occurred" "Auxilliary_system_failure" "system_failure") consolation=$(shuf -n1 -e "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "Attention required." "Attention is required!" "Perhaps It was inevitable." "It may or may not be cause for alarm." "Perhaps Machines too, are fallible." "Apologies" "Hopefully nobody else was watching" "shazbot" "maybe next time." "Nobody could have predicted this outcome." "I'm very sorry." "how unfortunate." "remember: don't panic" "oh dear" "Nothing could have been done to prevent this" "Remember: No disasters are fully preventable" "perhaps the only winning move is not to play" "Remember: Failure is our teacher, not our undertaker." "Remember: If at first you don't succeed... try again." "Remember: If at first you don't succeed... try... try again." "But your friends still love you." "Remember: the machine is not your enemy." "Command?" "Awaiting further instructions." "Remember: Logic is the beginning of wisdom... not the end of it." "Remember: When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." "Keep at it. Victory is within reach." "Remember: The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same." "Now, while this could have gone better, it could also have gone much worse." "Remember: we do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it was going to be easy." "Don't give up." "It has now been... -- zero... -- days, since the last serious failure." "Remember: instead of documenting the problem, you can fix it." "Remember: Artificial intelligence is no match for artificial stupidity." "Standing by," "Remember: with every failure, we get closer to success." "We live in a society." "sometimes failure is not an option; it's a necessity." "Keep at it." "Remember: mistakes are just the first step on the road to failure... <break time=\"250ms\"/> I mean success." "Don't leave. The drones need you... <break time=\"350ms\"/> They look up to you." "Try again, for great justice." "fantastic" "brilliant" "did you really think that would work?") if [ $SERIOUS -eq 0 ] then # perhaps some silliness. if [ $result -eq 0 ] then _sayfn --wait "$(shuf -n1 -e \ "$taskname complete. All systems nominal" \ "$taskname completed successfully." \ "$taskname resulted in success." \ "$taskname yielded a successful result." \ "$taskname concluded successfully." \ "$taskname completed as instructed." \ "Jobs done." \ )" & else if [ $result -eq 1 ] then _sayfn -x --wait "$(shuf -n1 -e \ "Alert$i Primary system failure. Attention is required." \ "Alert$i System failure$i Attention required! $consolation" \ "Alert$i $taskname resulted in failure! <break time=\"150ms\"/> $consolation" \ "Alert$i $taskname was not completed as intended; $consolation" \ "Alert$i An error has occurred! <break time=\"220ms\"/> $consolation" \ )" & else _sayfn --wait -x "Alert$i $errtext$transition code $result! <break time=\"350ms\"/> $consolation" & fi fi else # no silliness here. if [ $result -eq 0 ] then _sayfn --wait "Command complete." else if [ $result -eq 1 ] then _sayfn -x --wait "Alert. Command failed; error code $result!" fi fi fi exit $result
That’s so neat
I once experimented with something similar, except it was supported to trigger my smart speaker and drop into another part of the house to tell me.
Honestly, I really need to replace my proprietary smart speaker system with something self-hosted; it’s just I only recently have had the time to start cinsidering.
alias clip='xclip -selection clipboard'
When you pipe to this, for example
ls | clip
, it will stick the output of the command ran into the clipboard without needing to manually copy the output.Pretty sure this only works on x distros?
wl-copy
andwl-paste
are for Wayland FYI.Yep, pretty sure you are right.
#Create a dir and cd into it mkcd() { mkdir -p "$@" && cd "$@"; }
Here’s a script I use a lot that creates a temporary directory, cds you into it, then cleans up after you exit. Ctrl-D to exit, and it takes you back to the directory you were in before.
Similar to what another user shared replying to this comment but mine is in bash + does these extra stuff.
#!/bin/bash function make_temp_dir { # create a temporary directory and cd into it. TMP_CURR="$PWD"; TMP_TMPDIR="$(mktemp -d)"; cd "$TMP_TMPDIR"; } function del_temp_dir { # delete the temporary directory once done using it. cd "$TMP_CURR"; rm -r "$TMP_TMPDIR"; } function temp { # create an empty temp directory and cd into it. Ctr-D to exit, which will # delete the temp directory make_temp_dir; bash -i; del_temp_dir; } temp
This tmux wrapper is remarkably convenient:
Usage:
# Usage: t [session-name] # # With no arguments: # Lists existing tmux sessions, or prints "[No sessions]" if none exist. # # With a session name: # Attempts to attach to the named tmux session. # If the session does not exist, creates a new session with that name. # # Examples: # t # Lists all tmux sessions # t dev # Attaches to "dev" session or creates it if it doesn't exist function t { if [[ -z $1 ]]; then tmux ls 2> /dev/null || echo "[No sessions]" else tmux attach -t $@ 2> /dev/null if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then tmux new -s $@ fi fi }
alias gimme='git checkout'
Twins(-ish)!
alias gimme="chown <myname>:staff"
I have a few interesting ones.
Download a video:
alias yt="yt-dlp -o '%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' "
Execute the previous command as root:
alias please='sudo $(fc -n -l -1)'
Delete all the Docker things. I do this surprisingly often:
alias docker-nuke="docker system prune --all --volumes --force"
This is a handy one for detecting a hard link
function is-hardlink { count=$(stat -c %h -- "${1}") if [ "${count}" -gt 1 ]; then echo "Yes. There are ${count} links to this file." else echo "Nope. This file is unique." fi }
I run this one pretty much every day. Regardless of the distro I’m using, it Updates All The Things:
function up { if [[ $(command -v yay) ]]; then yay -Syu --noconfirm yay -Yc --noconfirm elif [[ $(command -v apt) ]]; then sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt autoremove -y fi flatpak update --assumeyes flatpak remove --unused --assumeyes }
I maintain an aliases file in GitLab with all the stuff I have in my environment if anyone is curious.
Execute the previous command as root
Fun fact if you are using bash,
!!
will evaluate to the previous command, so if you miss sudo on some long command, you can also just dosudo !!
.With the added benefit of it looking like you’re yelling at your prompt in order to get it to use sudo.
alias gl='git log' alias server-name-here='ssh server-name-here'
I have a bunch of the server aliases. I use those and gl the most.
Whatcha get in that log
Hahaha. Fucking autocorrect. Git log.
You can also use ssh shorthands in ~/.ssh/config
I do have the servers in
~/.ssh/config
. I just got tired of typingssh server
and wanted the be able to just typeserver
to ssh in.We almost have the same setup then, I use
ssh_hostnames=$(grep "^Host " ~/.ssh/config | awk '!/*/ {print $2}') for host in $ssh_hostnames do alias $host="ssh $host" done
in my .bash_aliases to parse the ~/.ssh/config file and cut off the 'ssh ’ part automatically for every Host I have in there.
That is a lovely setup. I’m gonna drop that into my
bash_aliases
so much more elegant than me adding the alias for each server.
it’s somewhat vibe coded but the one i probably use the most is this one to swap between speakers and headset. the device name to look for is just put directly in there, it’d take some adjustment to run it on different machines. this is in my .bashrc:
# switch sinks toggle_audio() { # Find headset sink ID dynamically headset_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "Plantronics" | awk '{print $1}') # Find speakers sink ID dynamically speakers_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "pci-0000_05_00.6" | awk '{print $1}') # Get current default sink current_sink=$(pactl get-default-sink) # Get current sink ID current_id=$(pactl list sinks short | grep "$current_sink" | awk '{print $1}') # Toggle between the two if [ "$current_id" = "$headset_id" ]; then pactl set-default-sink "$speakers_id" echo "Switched to speakers (Sink $speakers_id)" else pactl set-default-sink "$headset_id" echo "Switched to headset (Sink $headset_id)" fi }
generally i try not to use too many custom things because for work i regularly work on all kinds of different servers and i’ve just been too lazy to set up some solution to keep it all in sync. someday…
$ which diffuc diffuc: aliased to diff -uw --color=always
$ which grepnir grepnir: aliased to grep -niIr
$ cat `which ts` #!/bin/bash if [ "$#" -lt 1 ]; then tmux list-sessions exit fi if ! tmux attach -t "$1" then tmux new-session -s "$1" fi
i use
alias kimg='kitty +kitten icat'
to display images in my terminal pretty simple but nice
I have that one too, but my alias is called icat
on most of my systems I get tired of constantly
ls
ing after acd
so I combine them:cd(){ cd $1 && ls }
(excuse if this doesn’t work, I am writing this from memory)
I also wrote a function to access docker commands quicker on my Truenas system. If passed nothing, it enters the docker jailmaker system, else it passes the command to docker running inside the system.
docker () { if [[ "$1" == "" ]]; then jlmkr shell docker return else sudo systemd-run --pipe --machine docker docker "$@" return fi }
I have a few similar shortcuts for programs inside jailmaker and long directories that I got sick of typing out.
I’ve only used aliases twice so far. The first was to replace yt-dlp with a newer version because the version that comes pre-installed in Linux Mint is too outdated to download videos from YouTube. The second was because I needed something called “Nuget”. I don’t remember exactly what Nuget is but I think it was a dependency for some application I tried several months ago.
alias yt-dlp='/home/j/yt-dlp/yt-dlp' alias nuget="mono /usr/local/bin/nuget.exe"
Nuget is a the .NET package manager. Like npm or pip, but for .NET projects.
If you needed it for a published application that strikes me as fairly strange.
I looked through my bash history and it looks like I needed it to build an Xbox eeprom editor for Xemu. Xemu doesn’t (or at least didn’t, I haven’t used newer versions yet) have a built in eeprom editor and editing the Xbox eeprom is required for enabling both wide screen and higher resolutions for the games that support them natively.
I just looked at Xemu’s documentation, and it looks like they’ve added a link to an online eeprom editor, so the editor I used (which they do still link to) is no longer required.
Ah, if you need to build a .NET project that makes sense
jmpd(jump directory): fuzzy finds and opens directory with fzf
# fish shell function jmpd set _selection $(fzf --walker=dir); if test -n "$_selection" cd "$_selection"; end end
I made this one to find binaries in NixOs and other systems
get_bin_path() { paths=${2:-$PATH} for dr in $(echo $paths | tr ':' '\n') ; do if [ -f "$dr/$1" ] ; then echo "$dr/$1" return 0 fi done return 1 }
Then I made this one to, if I have a shell o opened inside neovim it will tell the neovim process running the shell to open a file on it, instead of starting a new process
_nvim_con() { abs_path=$(readlink --canonicalize "$@" | sed s'| |\\ |'g) $(get_bin_path nvim) --server $NVIM --remote-send "<ESC>:edit $abs_path<CR>" exit } # start host and open file _nvim_srv() { $(get_bin_path nvim) --listen $HOME/.cache/nvim/$$-server.pipe $@ } if [ -n "$NVIM" ] ; then export EDITOR="_nvim_con" else export EDITOR="_nvim_srv" fi
Lastly this bit: which if it detects a file and a line number split by a
:
it will open the file and jump to the line_open() { path_parts=$(readlink --canonicalize "$@" | sed s'| |\\ |'g | sed 's/:/\t/' ) file=$(echo "$path_parts" | awk ' { print $1 }' ) line=$(echo "$path_parts" | awk ' { print $2 }' ) if [ -n "$line" ] ; then # has line number if [ -n "$NVIM" ] ; then $(get_bin_path nvim) --server $NVIM --remote-send "<ESC>:edit $file<CR>:+$line<CR>" exit else $(get_bin_path nvim) --listen $HOME/.cache/nvim/$$-server.pipe $file "+:$line" fi else $EDITOR $file fi } alias nvim="_open"
To answer your question realistically I did
history | sed "s/.* //" | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
which returned as first non standard command
lr
which from mygrep lr ~/.bashrc
isalias lr="ls -lrth"