I am currently looking for a way to easily store and run commands, usually syncing files between two deeply nested directories whenever I want.
So far I found these projects:
Other solutions:
- Bash history using ^+r
- Bash aliases
- Bash functions
What do you guys use?
aliases in .bashrc
If you use fish you can use abbreviations
I wouldn’t install a program for this if your use case is simple. You will end up relying on it when there are already some built in tools that can get you 99% of the way there.
- Bash scripts placed in ~/bin or ~/.local/bin
- Can have simple or complex scripts setup to do whatever you want
- Easily called from terminal or automated through cron or systemd
- Environment variables set in -/.bashrc
- Great for storing common paths, strings, etc.
- Can be easily incorporated into bash scripts
- Aliases set in ~/.bashrc
- Ideal (IMO) for common commands with preferred options
- for example you could setup your most used
rsynccommand to an alias:alias rsync-cust=“rsync -avuP”
Edit: rephrased to not discount the tools shared. I am sure if you had a specific reason to use them they could be helpful. But I think for many users the above options are more than enough and are supported pretty universally.
I more or less was just looking for a general survey of what other people used.
I agree installing a binary for this small kind of thing might be excessive.
Yeah, potentially overkill, but all the power to anyone who wants to try them out. Freedom of choice is one of the best parts of Linux.
And sorry for the long response. It’s hard to gauge the proficiency that someone might have with Linux, so I tend to lean towards detailed explanations just in case
Obvious things I don’t see mentioned:
- Bash scripts kept in the home directory or another place that’s logical for them specifically.
history | grep whatever(or other useful piping), though your older commands are forgotten eventually. You can mess with the values ofHISTSIZEandHISTFILESIZEenvironment variables in your system.
Fish (or zsh with some addons) will give you tab completion based on previous commands, might be something of interest?
Here’s some addon tips if you’d rather run zsh instead of fish:
https://gist.github.com/abhigenie92/a907cdf8a474aa6b569ebe89aeee560d
Fish shell is great, but the more I’ve used it, the more incompatibilities I’ve found:
- Can’t use subshells
- Can’t use bash syntax (it would help if bass would process all commands by default)
- Can’t use bash completions (there’s a script to do that, but it makes start very slow)
Other than that, it just works by default (unlike zsh) and it works even better with an easy-to-install Tide
