Advanced Terminal Tips and Tricks

Kids these days….

These Ctrl keys are shortcuts from Emacs - there’s a Bash settings to switch to vi-mode if you so wish. Anyway, the first Emacs was written in 1981, probably on a PDP-11, which did not have Home and End! Same reason Neovim uses “yank” instead of “copy”. ctrl-c/ctrl-v did not exist as a shortcut back when vi was being written!

I know you didn’t intend to be mean or anything, but maaaaaan kids these days don’t know their history (not entirely your fault, btw)😆

This tip is super useful to me because not everyone is using a PC. On a PC sure, I would use the Home and End keys all the time. Now I’m using a laptop as my main computer and the Home and End keys are in a weird position that even to this day, 4ish years of laptop use, I still have to actually look at the keys to find them.

That’s horrible for muscle memory, every time I switch desk/keyboard I have to re-learn the position of the home/end/delete/PgUp/PgDn keys.

I got used to Ctrl-a / Ctrl-e and it became second nature, my hands don’t have to fish for extra keys, to the point that it becomes annoying when a program does not support that. Some map Ctrl-a to “Select all” so, for input fields where the selection is one line, I’d rather Ctrl-a then left/right to go to the beginning/end than fish for home/end, wherever they are.

That’s a new one for me. Thanks!

But that’s more key presses than just using existing keys

I have fzf-git for all of that, but honestly I don’t ever use it, as I’m hardly ever switching between branches and tab complete is enough for me in most cases.

###
# FZF GIT
###
# Deciphered from fzf-file-widget. Somewhat unclear why it doesn't exist already!
function fzf_add_to_commandline -d 'add stdin to the command line, for fzf functions'
  #git checkout $1
  read -l result
  
  commandline -t ""
  commandline -it -- (string escape $result)
  commandline -f repaint
end

function fzf_checkout -d "git checkout"
  read -l result
  git checkout $result
end


# https://gist.github.com/aluxian/9c6f97557b7971c32fdff2f2b1da8209
function __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo
  command -s -q git
    and git rev-parse HEAD >/dev/null 2>&1
end

function __git_fzf_git_status
  __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
  git -c color.status=always status --short | \
    fzf -m --ansi --preview 'git diff --color=always HEAD -- {-1} | head -500' | \
    cut -c4- | \
    sed 's/.* -> //' | \
    fzf_add_to_commandline
  commandline -f repaint
end

function __git_fzf_git_branch
  __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
  git branch -a --color=always | \
    grep -v '/HEAD\s' | \
    fzf -m --ansi --preview-window right:70% --preview 'git log --color=always --oneline --graph --date=short \
      --pretty="format:%C(auto)%cd %h%d %s %C(magenta)[%an]%Creset" \
      --print0 \
      --read0 \
      (echo {} | sed s/^..// | cut -d" " -f1) | head -'$LINES | \
    sed 's/^..//' | cut -d' ' -f1 | \
    sed 's#^remotes/##' | \
    # fzf_add_to_commandline | \
    fzf_checkout
end

function __git_fzf_git_tag
  __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
  git tag --sort -version:refname | \
    fzf -m --ansi --preview-window right:70% --preview 'git show --color=always {} | head -'$LINES | \
    fzf_add_to_commandline

end

function __git_fzf_git_log
  __git_fzf_is_in_git_repo; or return
  git log --color=always --graph --date=short --format="%C(auto)%cd %h%d %s %C(magenta)[%an]%Creset" | \
    fzf -m --ansi --reverse --preview 'git show --color=always (echo {} | grep -o "[a-f0-9]\{7,\}") | head -'$LINES | \
    sed -E 's/.*([a-f0-9]{7,}).*/\1/' | \
    fzf_add_to_commandline
end

# https://gist.github.com/junegunn/8b572b8d4b5eddd8b85e5f4d40f17236
function git_fzf_key_bindings -d "Set custom key bindings for git+fzf"
  bind \ca\cs __git_fzf_git_status
  bind \ca\cf __git_fzf_git_branch
  bind \ca\ct __git_fzf_git_tag
  bind \ca\cl __git_fzf_git_log
end

git_fzf_key_bindings

I use dtach for this feature

I should’ve just looked it up but got lazy to be honest.

I use Dreamhost to connect to IRC support channels using irssi. I go through Dreamhost since it hides my home IP address. It disconnects me frequently. This would be very useful.

Thank you for the info.