I have a utility called ZSH Autosuggestions, and it's probably one of the most useful things on my computer. It shows you a sort of preview of the most recent command you typed that matches the prefix of the current command you are typing. It's basically an automatic tool that bookmarks commands based on usage. I think the best bookmark systems are ones which simply track your entire history and suggest relevant pages based on it. That way the process of bookmark creation is automatic and you don't have to predict what you will need to access frequently.
This is essentially a fish built-in. I used to use zsh before, but since changing to fish I've never looked back.
Auto completion, abbreviations, better syntax, and especially the auto complete is like magic. It also seems to "know" in which working directories some commands work and won't suggest them if they arent.
I have to concur, fish is simply an amazing shell for interactive sessions. I've been using it for so long, I just take some things for granted, like the incredible autocomplete. As far as I understand, it looks at paths in history entries and won't suggest them if those aren't valid in the current directory. Then you also have the "shadow suggestion" described by GP, the Alt+arrows to just complete part of a history entry, the really good Ctrl+s (which also works for commands that implement fish suggestions, not just history), and so on.
I saw this in fish first. I really did want to love fish. I do love their tagline. However they are weirdly against comfigurable options and there were some minor things that irritated me that could not be configured away. So I looked at what zsh can do. I have a minimal setup now where I know what almost everything does and am very very happy with. Autosuggestions is fantastic.
I really wanted to like fish but it is so difficult to get it configured the way I would want to use it. I tried so many different ways and the barriers were just so high. It should not be so difficult to make a tool work the way I wanted to work.
> It also seems to "know" in which working directories some commands work
The 'It' above is actually the user as auto-complete is context dependent, so fish prioritises search results based on commands that were previously used within the current directory.
Seems like as good a time as any to show off this cursed thing I keep in my dotfiles:
# Allow .. through ........... (yup!) to cd up some number of directories.
for i in {1..10}; do
spaces=$(printf "%${i}s")
alias "${spaces// /.}."="cd ${spaces// /../}"
done
Going into it, I thought it would be something I'd use all the time. In practice all I ever use is `..` and not nearly as much as I originally imagined I would.
I have something similar (though less elegant). I find the best use case to be hitting ..........<RET> to get to root (in conjunction with zsh auto_cd option), rather than typing `cd /`.
Interesting approach. Since I've converted entirely to nushell, I'm using zoxide to solve this navigation friction. https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide
The only thing I'm missing from zsh is path aware auto completion... supposedly this works if you enable the sqlite history for nushell but iirc it was buggy.
alias .='dot_func'
alias ..='cd ../..'
alias ...='cd ../../..'
alias ....='cd ../../../..'
alias .....='cd ../../../../..'
dot_func ()
{
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
cd ..
else
source "$@"
fi
}
I never used pushd and popd. Did not even know about them. But I use autojump it give directories a prioroty numbers and then you just have to type "j pro" and you cd into your projects folder for example.
+1 for autojump since it's already in debian & ubuntu package repositories. Install with `apt install autojump` and add a line to your shell config file to load it. For Bash that means adding e.g. `source /usr/share/autojump/autojump.sh` to your .bashrc. Also works with zsh, fish, tcsh, clink.
pushd/popd are over 40 years old btw. Used to use them in the 90s. I decided invisible states requiring working memory create a cognitive split encouraging user error because you have to maintain the focus of the task and the invisible parts of the tool you're using to do the task.
Well ok, Jef Raskin decided that and I happen to agree with him.
My extension is "anything that requires traversing either taxonomies or invisible geometries is too much to ask." So for instance, tmux splits previous-pane and previous-window into two things so the "last thing I was looking at" now asks you to consider whether that was in a pane or a window[1] ... as if you had taken the time to diligently organize it (traversing taxonomy). Xorg's split of the clipboard into CLIPBOARD, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, CUT_BUFFER0-9 and every program having a different opinion on how to copy and paste into them is another one. And then tools like tmux have their own and tools like vim and emacs have their own. So vim, inside of tmux, inside of ssh, inside of some terminal ... right. [2]
Similarly, the multi-dimensionality of many tiled window managers (where you have up, down, left, right, tab left, tab right, workspace (up/down/left/right) etc ...) is like navigating via hypercube.
It's way too complicated to keep a mental model of and leads to lots of errors. I still use one because there's no other reasonable way to leverage the multi-tasking abilities of modern machines but it leads a lot to be desired. My user error rate is probably over 80%.
I'm sure some geniuses can do it but most people cannot.
[1] I have a fix!
Add this to .tmux.conf
set -g focus-events on
bind-key l run-shell "$HOME/bin/tmux-last switch"
set-hook -g pane-focus-out "run-shell 'tmux set-option @out #{pane_id}"
set-hook -g pane-focus-in "run-shell '$HOME/bin/tmux-last in #{pane_id} #{@out}"
It's still strait jacket drooling insanity, but at least it's a little less.
Probably the actual fix in X would be to somehow route all clipboards through DBus so then the user AND the application can have their own opinions and not have to have a bunch of accommodations for each other.
I made this helper function to navigate my projects, recursively, it will list them if there are more than one, but defaults to the first one unless you give it a number.
syntax:
projects <project-name> <match index>
alias:
function projects() {
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "please provide a project name"
return
fi
local allMatches=$(find ~/Documents/projects -maxdepth 2 -type d -name "*$1*" -print)
local firstMatch=$(echo "$allMatches" | head -n ${2:-1} | tail -n 1)
if [ -z "$firstMatch" ]; then
echo "no matches found"
return
else
if [ $(echo "$allMatches" | wc -l) -gt 1 ]; then
echo "matches found:"
echo "$allMatches" | awk '{print NR ") " $0}'
fi
cd "$firstMatch"
fi
}
Readit News
https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions?tab=readme-...
Auto completion, abbreviations, better syntax, and especially the auto complete is like magic. It also seems to "know" in which working directories some commands work and won't suggest them if they arent.
Extremely useful on a daily basis.
So I too went back to zsh.
The 'It' above is actually the user as auto-complete is context dependent, so fish prioritises search results based on commands that were previously used within the current directory.
Deleted Comment
The only thing I'm missing from zsh is path aware auto completion... supposedly this works if you enable the sqlite history for nushell but iirc it was buggy.
https://gist.github.com/chanux/1119556 (bash) https://gist.github.com/chanux/9411092 (fish)
That's `za <n>` to go back n directories up. It's a decade old and I still use this everyday.
I experimented with jumping up directory path by name with `xs`. But I don't use it that often (at all).
https://gist.github.com/chanux/08c6f53472190a02b33bd49100163...
`cd ..` coupled with `cd ~` seems to be good enough, really.
Super handy. This looks like it might be more polished version.
Deleted Comment
https://github.com/wting/autojump
just looked at it again it also has a jc command for child directories and commands to open file explorer that I never used.
Well ok, Jef Raskin decided that and I happen to agree with him.
My extension is "anything that requires traversing either taxonomies or invisible geometries is too much to ask." So for instance, tmux splits previous-pane and previous-window into two things so the "last thing I was looking at" now asks you to consider whether that was in a pane or a window[1] ... as if you had taken the time to diligently organize it (traversing taxonomy). Xorg's split of the clipboard into CLIPBOARD, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, CUT_BUFFER0-9 and every program having a different opinion on how to copy and paste into them is another one. And then tools like tmux have their own and tools like vim and emacs have their own. So vim, inside of tmux, inside of ssh, inside of some terminal ... right. [2]
Similarly, the multi-dimensionality of many tiled window managers (where you have up, down, left, right, tab left, tab right, workspace (up/down/left/right) etc ...) is like navigating via hypercube.
It's way too complicated to keep a mental model of and leads to lots of errors. I still use one because there's no other reasonable way to leverage the multi-tasking abilities of modern machines but it leads a lot to be desired. My user error rate is probably over 80%.
I'm sure some geniuses can do it but most people cannot.
[1] I have a fix!
Add this to .tmux.conf
Where tmux-last is https://9ol.es/tmp/tmux-last[2] If you are a traditionalist using xterm or some derivative, this block taken from my .Xresources should be enlightening
It's still strait jacket drooling insanity, but at least it's a little less.Probably the actual fix in X would be to somehow route all clipboards through DBus so then the user AND the application can have their own opinions and not have to have a bunch of accommodations for each other.
syntax:
alias: