AstonJ

AstonJ

Which command line tools do you use?

I’ve been watching Prag Dave’s Elixir course and I noticed he uses tree:

Tree is a recursive directory listing program that produces a depth indented listing of files. Color is supported ala dircolors if the LS_COLORS environment variable is set, output is to a tty, and the -C flag is used. With no arguments, tree lists the files in the current directory. When directory arguments are given, tree lists all the files and/or directories found in the given directories each in turn. Upon completion of listing all files/directories found, tree returns the total number of files and/or directories listed.

On Mac install with: brew install tree

EG:

$tree
.
├── README.md
├── lib
│   └── hangman.ex
├── mix.exs
└── mix.lock

You can use the options to ignore directories or files.

Any other cool command line tools you know of or use?

Most Liked

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

In short, a heck ton of them. I can write a series of articles about which tools I use. I made it a credo to gather as much as possible CLI and TUI tools and become master at them. The latter part still eludes me – not enough time and energy still – but I have become quite the small encyclopaedia of CLI/TUI tools.

Waiting for Aston’s “you should write a blog about it Dimi!”. :003:

Hallski

Hallski

Another one for tree, rg and jq.

Some others:

Maartz

Maartz

I like a tool called tl;dr.
It gives you basic knowledge of many commands.
On macOS it’s a good’ol brew install tldr
They also have a nodejs client, so it can be installed with npm.

EG:

❯ tldr grep

grep

Find patterns in files using regular expressions.
More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html>.

- Search for a pattern within a file:
    grep "search_pattern" path/to/file

- Search for an exact string (disables regular expressions):
    grep --fixed-strings "exact_string" path/to/file

- Search for a pattern in all files recursively in a directory, showing line numbers of matches, ignoring binary files:
    grep --recursive --line-number --binary-files=without-match "search_pattern" path/to/directory

- Use extended regular expressions (supports `?`, `+`, `{}`, `()` and `|`), in case-insensitive mode:
    grep --extended-regexp --ignore-case "search_pattern" path/to/file

- Print 3 lines of context around, before, or after each match:
    grep --context|before-context|after-context=3 "search_pattern" path/to/file

- Print file name and line number for each match:
    grep --with-filename --line-number "search_pattern" path/to/file

- Search for lines matching a pattern, printing only the matched text:
    grep --only-matching "search_pattern" path/to/file

- Search stdin for lines that do not match a pattern:
    cat path/to/file | grep --invert-match "search_pattern"

If a command does not exist, you can add it with a PR on their repo.
It’s a community-based FOSS tool.

Saves me a ton of time in googling and reading man pages.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

AstonJ
Which apps do you think are killing it right now? Either from a technical perspective or ones that you like personally or feel have been...
New
dasdom
No chair. I have a standing desk. This post was split into a dedicated thread from our thread about chairs :slight_smile:
New
AstonJ
Inspired by this tweet by @dasdom Even if you take out all the damage being done by humans, our planet has about 50B years before bein...
New
New
finner
When you are under pressure to deliver you ideally want your Pull Request to be reviewed, approved and merged as quick as possible. So do...
New
DevotionGeo
The V Programming Language Simple language for building maintainable programs V is already mentioned couple of times in the forum, but I...
New
Margaret
Hello everyone! This thread is to tell you about what authors from The Pragmatic Bookshelf are writing on Medium.
1147 29994 760
New
malloryerik
With 100% less blockchain. I went searching for a lightweight immutable database that could be audited and ran into this. I guess this ...
New
New
AstonJ
Thought this would be a nice way to start the year - have you seen or written a function (or method) or piece of code that you are partic...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Stop developing web apps with yesterday’s tools. Today, developers are increasingly adopting Clojure as a web-development platform. See f...
New
New
AstonJ
Curious to know which languages and frameworks you’re all thinking about learning next :upside_down_face: Perhaps if there’s enough peop...
New
Margaret
Hello everyone! This thread is to tell you about what authors from The Pragmatic Bookshelf are writing on Medium.
1147 29994 760
New
foxtrottwist
A few weeks ago I started using Warp a terminal written in rust. Though in it’s current state of development there are a few caveats (tab...
New
AstonJ
Was just curious to see if any were around, found this one: I got 51/100: Not sure if it was meant to buy I am sure at times the b...
New
New
NewsBot
Node.js v22.14.0 has been released. Link: Release 2025-02-11, Version 22.14.0 'Jod' (LTS), @aduh95 · nodejs/node · GitHub
New
PragmaticBookshelf
As digital systems increasingly run the world, mastery of the recurring patterns of software development risk is the key to fast and effe...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Lint your docs like code: turn any style guide into enforceable rules with Vale and publish clear, consistent content every time. ...
New