Can't remember the name of that one command line tool? Next time, add a comment!

One of my favorite command line tips: you can add ‘comments’ full of keywords to shell commands, which makes searching your command history easier.

<span style="color:#323232;">> obscure-cmd --with-weird-flags -Qdt # searchable comment keywords
</span>

Presumably you’re using something like fzf for history search, but this is still useful without it.

This is especially useful for cli tools with obscure names/flags, or when you can’t remember where a particular log file is.

Some examples from my history:

tail awesomewm logs:

<span style="color:#323232;">tail -f ~/.cache/awesome/logs -n 2000 # tail follow log awesomewm
</span>

fix linux clock drift:

<span style="color:#323232;">sudo ntpd -qg && sudo hwclock --systohc # fix linux clock time drift
</span>

copy ngrok public url to clipboard:

<span style="color:#323232;">curl -s http://localhost:4040/api/tunnels | jq ".tunnels[0].public_url" | tr -d '"' | tr -d 'n' | xclip -selection clipboard -i # fetch ngrok url uri, copy to clipboard
</span>

sign ssh and gpg, then refresh the emacs keychain env:

<span style="color:#323232;">keychain --agents gpg,ssh --eval id_rsa <some-gpg-id> && emacsclient -e '(keychain-refresh-environment)' # sign ssh,gpg password, refresh emacs env
</span>

Another gpg one:

<span style="color:#323232;">git config commit.gpgsign false # disable gpg signing for this repo
</span>

Pacman/pamac commands, like listing orphaned packages:

<span style="color:#323232;">pacman -Qdt # list orphans
</span><span style="color:#323232;">pamac list -o # list orphans
</span>

xprop - super useful for debugging window management, for some reason i can never remember what it’s called:

<span style="color:#323232;">xprop # mouse click window x11 linux describe info client helper whateveritscalled
</span>

Some helpers from my clawe project:

<span style="color:#323232;">bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.sxhkd.bindings/reset-bindings # reset sxhkd bindings
</span><span style="color:#323232;">bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.restart/reload # reload clawe
</span>

Aliases come to mind as well - in some cases that might be a better fit. I like this because it’s so low-lift.