wjsullivan.net

Overloading the Machine

NotesBash

Command editing

C-x C-e will open the command line in $EDITOR.

History

`!*`	Designates all arguments of the preceding command.
`!^`	Designates the first argument of the preceding command.
`!$`	Designates the last argument of the preceding command.
`^la^t`	Replaces the -la options with -t in the preceding command.
`sudo !!`	Execute the previous command with sudo.

!whatever:p| Show but don't execute the last command that starts with whatever.

`!!:gs/foo/bar`	Execute the last command, replacing all instances of foo with bar.
`-n`	Go n events back
`:n`	reference a word number
`:p`	just print the event
`!50- foo`	run command 50 replacing the last argument with "foo"
`grep -v`	Shows lines that don't match the pattern
`cp foo{,.bak}`	Make a backup of foo.

Example of find using -exec:

find . -type f -exec file ’{}’ \;

Using History Interactively

Stick the job in the background (ctrl-Z then "bg") then detach it from the terminal (in bash, "disown -h %[jobid]"). You may then close the terminal.

Completion

Add to ~/.bashrc:

# Use bash-completion, if available
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
  . /etc/bash_completion
fi

Expansion

M-{} Include all expansions. Also can do things like mkdir -p foo/{cur,new,tmp}.

Keybindings

bind -P will show keybindings.

Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took *thousands* of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.

-- Dave Barry