• Posts
  • RSS
  • ◂◂RSS
  • Contact

  • Bash quibbles

    January 23rd, 2009
    programming, shell, tech
    I like bash. It does a lot of things well and makes my life on the command line a lot more pleasant. It generally has nice tab completion, but there are some ways it would work better, though:
    1. Tab completion on paths containing environment variables should not expand them. Or if it is going to expand them, it should not follow with a space. If I'm doing everything relative to the directory $ON_B then I don't care that it expands to /nfs/man/this/path/is/freakin/long/on_b. With my shell PS1 hack (below) I don't have to see this depth all the time, but it could be even better.
    2. Tab completion should understand filename wildcards. If I have 'ls $ON_B/{a,b}*/repor and press tab then I want to have the command replaced by ls $ON_B/{a,b}*/report/. The logic is a little tricky. And there's even a bit of ambiguity: if the directory reporting appears in one (or more) of the possible expansions but not in all of them, while the directory report appears in all, do we ignore reporting? This affects whether we append the trailing slash in this case, and has widespread effects in other cases. I'm inclined to have it complete only with things that exist in all matches. Note that with this completion rule, to get something that exists in some of the matches, you need to edit the path being completed to rule out the things that don't have it. So while I wouldn't complete reporting from ls $ON_B/{a,b}*/repor if any of the dirs didn't have reporting, I would complete it from ls $ON_B/{a,b}*/reporti.

    On a completely different subject, I've started using the InvertColors Firefox addon, and it makes pages look a lot nicer.

    Comment via: facebook

    Recent posts on blogs I like:

    Moral aesthetics

    “Doing good” differs by subculture The post Moral aesthetics appeared first on Otherwise.

    via Otherwise September 29, 2022

    Futurist prediction methods and accuracy

    I've been reading a lot of predictions from people who are looking to understand what problems humanity will face 10-50 years out (and sometimes longer) in order to work in areas that will be instrumental for the future and wondering how accurate thes…

    via Posts on September 12, 2022

    On the Beach

    I really like going in the water and this beach is a great place for building sand castles and boogie boarding. I also like trying to float on top of big waves. I'm not very good at it. I only float on the flat waves.

    via Anna Wise's Blog Posts July 12, 2022

    more     (via openring)


  • Posts
  • RSS
  • ◂◂RSS
  • Contact