Just checking, because I learnt to type before I worked this out, and because surely someone reading doesn’t know: press tab. Bash will fill in file names from your current directory.
E.g. say you have files fred1file, fred2file, jim.
Type f then press tab, it will fill to “fred”. Then press 2 and press tab again and it will fill the full “fred2file”.
edit - I should’ve mentioned that this isn’t native to bash, it requires installation of bash-completion. But bash-completion is installed by default in many distros.
Shit is usually a pain in the ass. The challenge is divining how much of a pain in the ass something has to be that someone else might have made a solution for it.
I didn’t know you could ctrl+shift+c to copy in the terminal until a month ago when my linux n00b wife said "there has to be a better way to do this. I’ve been right clicking to copy for 10 years.
I used to have shift insert in my muscle memory from Windows, but since my job has used a Mac since 2020 it’s fallen out. I never knew Ctrl insert was copy, that’s nifty! Another tool in the arsenal. It will be useful when copy in select isn’t set and I don’t know how to set it up lol.
Ctrl+c to copy, Ctrl+v to paste, Ctrl+z to undo last change (chain it multiple times to reverse time) hopes this helps, ctrl+tab also changes applications on macos and Linux to my knowledge. If you know anymore let’s put them together
Congratulations! I remember where I was when I first learned it (in a noisy server room at the back of a machine shop).
Now pair it with FZF for fuzzy finding – it’s surprisingly easy to set up, just following any guide. It’s insanely useful. I find myself even doing things like typing:
commands with these like comments on the ends as sort of “tags” so I can ctrl+r search for them later. Yes, I know I could just use a named function, but this is like the step just before that–before I know if I’ll be issuing the same command all the time, or just for the next couple weeks. (This one was from when I was resting my notebook on my laptop.)
Before trying ctrl-s, you may want to disable software flow control: run stty -ixon & add it to your initialization files.
Otherwise, you’ll pause terminal output.
ctrl-q resumes terminal output.
What the fuck!? How am I only learning this now, after years of linux as daily driver?!
Just checking, because I learnt to type before I worked this out, and because surely someone reading doesn’t know: press tab. Bash will fill in file names from your current directory.
E.g. say you have files fred1file, fred2file, jim.
Type f then press tab, it will fill to “fred”. Then press 2 and press tab again and it will fill the full “fred2file”.
Have a play, it works in heaps of situations.
Yeah already use this all the time, had to set it up on arch to work with sudo tho.
Bash will also do autocomplete for cli programs that have autocomplete functionality. Try typing:
git r<tab><tab>you’ll see options for all the git commands that start with r. Often cli commands will have autocompletion for long (double dash) options.
If you want to see all the commands that have auto complete available, look in:
/usr/share/bash-completion/completions/
There’s a few other locations they can live, notably:
/etc/bash_completion.d/ ~/.bash_completion ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/
I don’t know if there are more or if there is any variation per distro.
You can also write your own bash completions. They can get pretty smart and context sensitive.
Pretty good beginning tutorial:
https://iridakos.com/programming/2018/03/01/bash-programmable-completion-tutorial
edit - I should’ve mentioned that this isn’t native to bash, it requires installation of bash-completion. But bash-completion is installed by default in many distros.
Shit is usually a pain in the ass. The challenge is divining how much of a pain in the ass something has to be that someone else might have made a solution for it.
I didn’t know you could ctrl+shift+c to copy in the terminal until a month ago when my linux n00b wife said "there has to be a better way to do this. I’ve been right clicking to copy for 10 years.
most DE’s have a thing where you can paste highlighted text using the middle mouse button
It’s also independent from the Clipboard so you can do it while keeping your clipboard
Middle mouse button?!
Most mouse wheels can be clicked in place of the middle button, which has been removed from most modern computer mouses.
It’s also known as mouse 3 if you need to find it on your mouse or want to bind it to something else.
And ctrl + shift + v to paste, just in case
If that doesn’t work, Shift + Insert.
you can also just use ctrl + insert for copy and shift + insert for paste.
I used to have shift insert in my muscle memory from Windows, but since my job has used a Mac since 2020 it’s fallen out. I never knew Ctrl insert was copy, that’s nifty! Another tool in the arsenal. It will be useful when copy in select isn’t set and I don’t know how to set it up lol.
I have always used ctrl/shift insert, I never got used to ctrl c/v. Glad you have new tools!
MinGW can do that, too. Useful for Git.
Ctrl+c to copy, Ctrl+v to paste, Ctrl+z to undo last change (chain it multiple times to reverse time) hopes this helps, ctrl+tab also changes applications on macos and Linux to my knowledge. If you know anymore let’s put them together
Congratulations! I remember where I was when I first learned it (in a noisy server room at the back of a machine shop).
Now pair it with FZF for fuzzy finding – it’s surprisingly easy to set up, just following any guide. It’s insanely useful. I find myself even doing things like typing:
$ xinput --disable $(xinput --list | grep -i touchpad | grep 'id=[0-9]\+' -o | cut -d= -f2) # Disable synaptic touchpad trackpad pointercommands with these like comments on the ends as sort of “tags” so I can ctrl+r search for them later. Yes, I know I could just use a named function, but this is like the step just before that–before I know if I’ll be issuing the same command all the time, or just for the next couple weeks. (This one was from when I was resting my notebook on my laptop.)
I like this; I have a lot of commands that I don’t use often enough to justify an alias, but still need to rerun all the time. thanks!
As usual, that’s documented (we can RTFM).
Before trying ctrl-s, you may want to disable software flow control: run
stty -ixon& add it to your initialization files. Otherwise, you’ll pause terminal output. ctrl-q resumes terminal output.sttyreveals terminal special charactersThese special characters/keys often perform special functions. To illustrate
Use mcfly and it will be even better.