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

> obscure-cmd --with-weird-flags -Qdt # searchable comment keywords

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.

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Some examples from my history:

tail awesomewm logs:

tail -f ~/.cache/awesome/logs -n 2000 # tail follow log awesomewm

fix linux clock drift:

sudo ntpd -qg && sudo hwclock --systohc # fix linux clock time drift

copy ngrok public url to clipboard:

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

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

keychain --agents gpg,ssh --eval id_rsa <some-gpg-id> && emacsclient -e '(keychain-refresh-environment)' # sign ssh,gpg password, refresh emacs env

Another gpg one:

git config commit.gpgsign false # disable gpg signing for this repo

Pacman/pamac commands, like listing orphaned packages:

pacman -Qdt # list orphans
pamac list -o # list orphans

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

xprop # mouse click window x11 linux describe info client helper whateveritscalled

Some helpers from my clawe project:

bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.sxhkd.bindings/reset-bindings # reset sxhkd bindings
bb --config ~/russmatney/clawe/bb.edn -x clawe.restart/reload # reload clawe

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