That said, this is probably what any big enough company would do. So your point still stands, maybe car manufacturers are no different.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37972813

Points: 13

# Comments: 4

On a similar note, though, I have amassed a "dictionary" of 50+ bash aliases, 1-, 2-, or 3-characters long.

Some "theories" emerged as well - I have groups of aliases whose names follow a pattern and depend on what subcommand (e.g. in git or kubectl) or options are included in the alias. This is good for mnemonics.

For extremely common commands, I ditch mnemonics and just choose a 1- or 2-character name that has no connection to the name of the command. For example r='cd -'. I chose "r" simply because it's on the opposite side of Enter, and I get to alternate my hands. (I guess this is a "brief".)

What got me into the alias hoarding business was the discovery of complete-alias[1] and, later, the progcomp_alias bash option. Turned out, you don't have to choose between aliases and programmable completion, you can have both.

[1]: https://github.com/cykerway/complete-alias

Instead of holding the modifier key(s) when activating a shortcut, you can press and release each modifier sequentially.

It does come with some of the fancy keyboards' firmware, but is also a built-in feature of all major OS-es. You can get it without spending a single dollar.

[1]: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StickyModifiers

If you optimize a shell feature for general-purpose programming, interactivity will suffer (increased verboseness, usually), and vice versa.

If we try to bring shells closer to the real PLs, instead of just using those PLs when it matters, we'll lose some of things that made shells attractive in the first place.

No, it's a shell that lets you interact with the OS. All the "clasical" UNIX shells were created with interactive use in mind and optimized for it, but happen to be good enough at batch processing[1] to be conflated with programming languages (mostly these days, like, 40+ years later).

The focus on interactive use is the reason you don't have to

- surround command argument lists with parentheses

- put commas between command arguments

- put semicolons at EOL

- surround string literals with quotes (unless the content interferes with the syntax, like, sigils or IFS chars, and you want to escape it).

- surround variable names in braces (unless you want to use some advanced substitution)

- call commands to manipulate I/O; it's baked in.

And these are just the things that existed 40 years ago. Bash gives you so much more stuff that makes interactive use a bliss, but I'm not going to dump the man page here.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batch_processing

Something something boson something neutron, and the Earth goes kaboom.

Children can be very dangerous.

It's not missing. PP is making a point about "single-command variables."

Most likely a command in your script (or one source-d into it) makes an assumption about your $SHELL or login shell that is true for bash/zsh but not for fish.

Merely adding a shebang won't fix such a script.

If you use bash, or any readline-based command line (in emacs mode):

  mv long.file.name |^W^Y^Y

  mv long.file.name long.file.name |

edit: and if your filename has spaces, replace the ^W above with M-C-b C-k

It's only infinite if you scroll for infinitely long time.

I think the author's point was about how much code you have on the screen at any given instant. Without having to scroll or jump.

I use the multiple desktops feature a lot, though. Some programs are pinned to a dedicated desktop and run all day. Others I start in (or move to, later) a numbered desktop, and switch to them by changing the desktop. Often, most of the desktops contain only one window.

I once used i3 and sway the right way, of course. I guess I had one too many of those programs that were not designed to work at arbitrary window sizes, added the above rule and called it a day.

  for_window [all] floating enable

yes, my only source for my previous comment was a passport control officer asking me "do you speak bahasa" at the airport :-)

  :1,5 !tac

Everything but the last argument:

  % git add -p dir1
  % !!- dir2
  git add -p dir2

  % textadept a b c
  % vim !*
  vim a b c

  % echo helo world
  % ^lo^llo
  echo hello world

  % diff path/a/file path/b/file
  % diff !$ !^
  diff path/b/file path/a/file

Also, the bangs can be anywhere on the command line, even inside other kinds of expansion; history expansion has highest priority of all.

Edit: the above is csh-style history expansion, available in bash as well.