Master the history command and learn some interesting usage of the bash history feature in this tutorial.
  • mbw@lemmy.ml
    11·
    5 months ago

    If you have fzf installed, it is easy to integrate it with your bash history. In my .bashrc, I have:

    # Introduce fzf-driven functionality as described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/fzf.
source /usr/share/fzf/key-bindings.bash
source /usr/share/fzf/completion.bash

    Also, you may be interested in zoxide, which keeps track of paths you have navigated to. Also from my .bashrc:

    # Enable an autojump-like 'j' command. Use 'ji M' to select paths starting with M using fzf.
# This needs to always come last.
eval "$(zoxide init --cmd j bash)"
    • dave@hal9000@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 months ago

      I just started using both recently and it’s great. For the fzf file search, there’s even some extension that can show a preview pane of text files and even images!

  • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
    71·
    5 months ago

    To use the last argument of the last ran command, use the Alt+. keys.

    Sounds like a poor-man’s !$ to me!

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
      4·
      5 months ago

      $_ also works. I love Alt+. but sadly it doesn’t work on any Mac terminal emulator I’ve found and, even more sadly, I am forced to use a Mac at work.

      I haven’t tried !$ so I’m not familiar with its function, but one nice thing about Alt+. is that you’re not limited to the last argument of the most recent command; instead, it allows you to scroll backwards like Ctrl+R.

    • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Fewer keystrokes, more features, and the ability to see what you’re about to do explicitly. How does that make it the poor man’s option?

      • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Seems like it’s terminal-emulator-specific rather than a built-in shell feature

        • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          No, it’s a shell feature. Terminal emulators don’t even know what shell are running typically, and I haven’t heard of them adding shell features. That would require the terminal emulator knowing you’re using bash, knowing how to interrogate history etc…

          From man bash:

                 yank-last-arg (M-., M-_)
              Insert  the last argument to the previous command (the last word
              of the previous history entry).  With a numeric argument, behave
              exactly  like  yank-nth-arg.   Successive calls to yank-last-arg
              move back through the history list, inserting the last word  (or
              the  word  specified  by the argument to the first call) of each
              line in turn.  Any numeric argument supplied to these successive
              calls  determines  the direction to move through the history.  A
              negative argument switches the  direction  through  the  history
              (back or forward).  The history expansion facilities are used to
              extract the last word, as if the "!$" history expansion had been
              specified.
          • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            Neat! Other replies saying it doesn’t work on their machine, I’ll have to try it out in a few different environments.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    6·
    5 months ago

    Here’s something I use to search history for commands or keywords. I have this as a function in my profile:

    function hgr() {
    history | grep "$1"
}

    history grep

    Usage: hgr git to search for commands containing git.

    Someone more knowledgeable may be able to point out ways to improve this.

    • Will@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      you can get a lot of the way there with Control+R reverse history search (mentioned in the article) – and it’s interactive. With fzf you can even get fuzzy history searching (the first search result has a video). atuin puts history into a proper db, optional syncs across hosts, and, like fzf, enhances control+r

  • GlenRambo@jlai.lu
    6·
    5 months ago

    As a noob where do I find more handy tips like this? Alone with handy/popular apps?

    Almost every windows app I had was on Linux (most were FOSS already) but I know there will be some unique or interesting ones.

    For example in android there is Obtanium now to update apps direct from git, or the many was to use YT without ads.

  • Will@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    I have a bash function in fuzzy_arg that I bind to Alt-a to uses fzf for interactively inserting arguments from previous commands. It’s Ctrl-r for Alt-. – I’ve found it super useful for essentially inserting partial commands (single arguments) from the history

  • xlash123@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    5 months ago

    I’ve been using McFly to do my history searching. It’s pretty good. I recommend changing the default sort from rank to time though

    • whoareu@lemmy.ca
      1·
      5 months ago

      I wonder what “neural networks” they are using in it and how is it improving the accuracy

  • lattrommi@lemmy.ml中文
    1·
    5 months ago

    is there a way to save commands from history? i tried to figure this out when i was starting to use linux regularly, to help learn commands and to make a reference for myself as to what the commands do. i’m familiar with things like man, info, tldr and others but i wanted to put things in my own words since i remember better that way.

    what i’m wanting but can’t seem to automate: -save commands from bash history to a file with only the command and arguments used, no line numbers or time stamps. -filenames can be kept, but if filenames are removable easily, that would be better. -file saved in should have the list sorted with any duplicates removed and happen after any terminal session ends. -i’ve read about changing the prompt but not done it correctly and not sure if possible or the safest way. -i’ve tried using .bash_logout but it doesn’t seem to do anything and i’m not sure why.

    this isn’t too important anymore, as i’ve grown more comfortable with linux and bash but it bugs me that i never got it to work. i can copy and paste more detailed notes of what i tried but i’d need to redact a bunch of cursing and frustrated whining.

    • petsoi@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      You mean sth like cat <(history | cut -c 8-) history.txt | sort | uniq > history.txt? Not sure if it possible to remove the file names.

      It should probably work to put it in .bash_logout.

      • lattrommi@lemmy.ml中文
        2·
        5 months ago

        yeah that looks exactly like what i wanted, thanks! i probably should have asked my question a couple years ago but i was still very new to linux and didn’t quite know the lingo. i’m still not quite sure how < works in general but i get the pipe and other redirects at least.

        putting it in .bash_logout doesn’t always work. something involving login shells i don’t quite understand yet but i’ll read more about it. i saw mention of putting exit_session() { . "$HOME/.bash_logout" } trap exit_session SIGHUP in .bashrc to make it always work but i also don’t understand trap yet either so i’ll look into that too.

        thanks again, your reply helped point me in the right direction of things i want to learn!

        • petsoi@discuss.tchncs.deOP
          1·
          5 months ago

          when calling cat <(echo data from the stdin stream) from_file.txt, you get the data in the first argument from a stream. With the .bash_logout I do not have much experience yet.