I'd say
cd
rm
mkdir
su
and many more π
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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for file in *.WAV; do ffmpeg -i β$fileβ -i cover.png -disposition:v attached_art β$(basename β$fileβ .wav).flacβ
(Iβm doing this from memory, so I may have messed something up, but thatβs the gist of it for taking a bunch of WAV files and turning them into FLACs with cover art. I also do a similar setup for combining the metadata of an MP3 and audio data of a WAV, since They Might Be Giants seems to have forgotten FLAC was invented.)
grep, sed, awk, and find
What do y'all use awk for really? 20 of using Linux, I've never had to use awk. And I've done a looot of scripting in my days. Anything from building my own clone of polybar using eww (with loads of scripts underneath), to automated systems for bulk handling of student assignments back at uni when I used to help out with grading and such.
What's awk good for that other standard utilities can't do?
I use awk instead of cut cause I can remember the syntax better.
ps aux | grep zoom | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9
I've been using Linux for 25 years, awk is a more recent addition to my arsenal, but rapidly becoming more and more useful.
For example, awk is extremely helpful if you want to rearrange columns, do math on columns, essentially do things that would take multiple lines of bash with cut and read.
I used to switch to perl or python if I needed awk. These days I don't tend to run into it as much. Not sure if that was a good choice. But it's how I spent the past 25 years.
That makes sense! I think I'd be running Nushell for this if the scripts didn't need to be very portable, sounds like a good use case for that.
I usually use something like awk '{print $2}' to get a bit of some output
Ex: list processes, grep for the line I want, then awk out the chunk I want from that line (the pid):
ps aux | grep myprogram | awk '{print $2}'
That's the only think I know how to do with awk, and I reach for it a lot! cut is purpose-built for that function, and is supposedly easier to understand; but it doesn't seem to just work like awk does.
I think cut is a little bit finicky because two consecutive occurrences of the cell delimiter counts, and gives an empty cell when selecting the index between them.
choose is a bit better at this from what I remember, which is like the modern cut, I believe, of course written in Rust.
Otherwise Nushell excels at this sort of thing, although I don't really use it.
Oh, I hadn't heard about choose!
I have been using Nushell, and you're right, it is great at parsing input. Commands like detect columns and parse are very nice, and have been supplanting awk for me.
I have a script named d in my PATH and it contains this:
("$@" > /dev/null 2>&1 &)
It allows me to run any program in a fully detached state in a way that works even if the terminal that started the program closes, and it's as simple as d <command>.
How does this even work? I get the redirection part, but how is the command executed in a detached state?
the last & is like doing "command &". d is a function that takes argument and $@ is usually the first argument
good idea, I've been manually typing out variations of this as needed for years.
When I'm in some subdirectory of a git repository, I use this command to jump to the repo root:
alias gtop="cd \$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"
What I do with all git related aliases is I alias git to just g in the shell. Then for any alias I want that uses git I just put that alias in the global git config under the alias section.
This avoids polluting the shell with a bunch of git-specific aliases. Just the one, g.
I certainly see the value in this strategy! But I'm not going to give up my top-level aliases. I enjoy saving two keystrokes too much!
Here are my most used aliases (these ones use Nushell syntax):
alias st = git status
alias sw = git switch
alias ci = git commit
alias lg = git log --color --graph '--pretty=format:%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit
alias push = git push
I was also delighted to learn that I could get the same short aliases for corresponding fugitive commands in vim/neovim using the vim-alias plugin:
-- This is a lazy.nvim plugin module
return {
'Konfekt/vim-alias',
config = function()
-- Shortcuts for git operations to match some of the shell aliases I have.
-- For example, `:sw ` expands to `:Git switch `
vim.cmd [[Alias sw Git\ switch]]
vim.cmd [[Alias ci Git\ commit]]
vim.cmd [[Alias pull Git\ pull]]
vim.cmd [[Alias push Git\ push]]
vim.cmd [[Alias show Git\ show]]
vim.cmd [[Alias re Git\ restore]]
vim.cmd [[Alias lg GV]]
end,
}
Fugitive is very nice for integrating git workflows in the editor, and its commands have very nice tab completion for branches and such.
two keystrokes
For me I'd be saving one keystroke. Status for me would be g s, g c for commit, and so on. Single letter aliases for the most common commands, two letters for less common in a conflict. π
But these days since a few years back I just use lazygit (aliased to lg btw, lol).
Everything in lazygit is basically just single keystrokes also. c for commit, etc. Very handy.
Fugitive
Cool beans, sounds like a good tool! I'm on team Helix since a few years, after being a vim/nvim user for about a decade, and emacs a couple years before that. Helix's paradigm just makes so much sense. π―π Jumping around symbols intra-file and inter-file, and LSP support built-in, no fussing. Worth a try for a few weeks if you ask me.
Oh yeah, I do find Helix interesting! I sometimes recommend it to people who don't have a background with modal editing as a batteries-included option for getting started. I have tried it a little bit myself. It's hard for me to give up leap.nvim and fugitive, which is holding me back.
I've been meaning to try out dedicated git programs to see how comfortable I can be without fugitive. Tig is one that caught my eye. Or sometimes I even think about using Gitbutler because its virtual branch feature seems very useful, and I haven't seen any other tool that does that.
I think the best way is just take the leap, and try it out for real. π
I used Tig before lazygit actually. It's great for getting an overview of history. But lazygit I think is more focused on the current state, and workflow-oriented. It is very easy to drop commits, rebase, edit commits, etc.
I'm not sure what virtual branches are or why I would need them but sounds interesting. π
xkill :-(
Maybe "alias u=cd .." or "alias mkcd=mkdir -p $1 && cd $1"
Totally forgot my favorites. C=clear, vi=nvim, l=eza -lh
I like mkcd! I have the same thing. Although what I use more is a function I pair with it that specifically creates a temporary directory, and cds to it. It's useful for temporary work, like extracting from a zip file.
These are my Nushell implementations:
# Create a directory, and immediately cd into it.
# The --env flag propagates the PWD environment variable to the caller, which is
# necessary to make the directory change stick.
def --env dir [dirname: string] {
mkdir $dirname
cd $dirname
}
# Create a temporary directory, and cd into it.
def --env tmp [
dirname?: string # the name of the directory - if omitted the directory is named randomly
] {
if ($dirname != null) {
dir $"/tmp/($dirname)"
} else {
cd (mktemp -d)
}
}
pacman -Syu
chown
chmod
namei -om to check permission issues
I have to dual boot for work, so every day I have to reboot into a different OS install. It's on its own drive with its own bootloader, so I can't use systemctl reboot --boot-loader-entry. But I was able get a smooth process using efibootmgr.
This is my Nushell implementation:
def boot-to [
device: string@boot-devices # Identifier of device to boot to (e.g. 0003)
] {
sudo efibootmgr --bootnext $device
systemctl reboot
}
# This function exists to provide tab completion for boot-to
def boot-devices [] {
efibootmgr | parse --regex 'Boot(?<value>\S+)\* (?<description>(?:\w+ )*\w+)'
}
top, obviously.