An interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line | Hacker News Reader

An interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line

github.com

268 pointsdnsfr48 comments

Once I tried a tool like this, but just realized, there is already a method of that: the ~/bin folder.

You can write bash scripts, or scripts in any programming language with the proper shebang line, you can download other people's scripts, and you don't need bash history to keep them. Listing all of them is just an ls. I tend to not put file extensions of them and use good naming, so you can see everything without looking into them.

> Once I tried a tool like this, but just realized, there is already a method of that: the ~/bin folder.

One thing I'd add to this is that "crib notes" can be captured in man[0] pages. For example, having them in $HOME/man and ensuring MANPATH[1] includes it serves as a nice complement IMHO. There seems to be a markdown-based tool[2] which can assist in authoring them too.

EDIT: It looks like pandoc[3] can generate man pages from markdown as well.

0 - https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/howto-create-a-manpage-fr...

1 - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=man&apropos=0&sekt...

2 - https://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/05/06/man-pages-in-markdo...

3 - https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html

to these great refs I would recommend the Ruby tool ronn

https://github.com/rtomayko/ronn

Great! Now, how does that bash syntax go again...?

This is why I have a similar tool for command line cheat sheet snippets - recalling bits of syntax to be combined into a command or a script.

As GP, mentioned, you put the correct shebang. I write stuff in Python and make them as pipe-capable as possible. You don't have to bend hell and flip it upside down to write scripts.

Sure - I use both bash and python for this purpose. Sometimes bash really is the right tool for the job, for example, when you need to use a lot of other complex CLI utilities, or when pipelines of simple commands get the job done in a simpler way.

I'm just explaining why a command line cheat sheet tool is useful to me. I don't need to be convinced that it isn't.

And then rofi for great good!

    > ... there is already a method of that: the ~/bin folder.

More power to you if you can do that, but for me it's a memory problem and a problem of being able to figure out WTF options I need when I am in the middle of something.

man pages (and --help) are great if you have the time to sit down, ponder and experiment. But when you're trying to get stuff overwith, a massive wall of historically interesting text just isn't helpful.

The vast majority of invocations of any given command, I suspect, are limited to a not more than a handful of use-cases. In other words just enough combinations of arguments and options to perform a small number of different tasks. This is what people are typically interested in when they're on the command line. In that context getting massive dump of every possible option in a man page is frustrating and counter-productive.

For example, "tar". I use this command in 2 simple ways: archive a directory into a gzipped tar or extract a gzipped tar. This is what effectively everyone uses it for >99% of the time: toggle between a directory and a tar.gz file.

Basically... just 2 forms "tar -zxvf" and "tar ..." oh shit, I forgot how to tar/compress a directory, let's check the man page... ok "tar -cf" to create a tar, but wait I want it gzipped, and actually I forgot what the z, v and f stand for, now I need look each of those up, wait, do I really mean gzip? or bzip, oops more research.

To be fair, tar might be too easy an example but you can easily go down a manpage-rabbit-hole because of a lack of common usage examples.

I think it’s just a habit to turn these two or four versions of using tar into the same amount of one liner shell scripts. Or maybe a longer one with options and usage printing.

The perfect tool for your problem is https://tldr.sh/.

You don't even have to write the pages yourself, there are a lot of already pre-written.

Wow, this is really cool. I assumed this was going to be written in go or rust, but taking a look it's actually all bash! I'm always surprised by how much people can get out of bash.

It's also some of the cleanest bash I've seen. Definitely going to be using some of these patterns for my own scripts.

Exactly my thoughts. Beautifully written and well organized bash code.

Thanks! Actually it's written in bash because it started as a 25-line script. If it gets bigger, I'll consider rust.

This looks cool, a common workflow of mine is `cmd --blah --blah ` ah damn I don't know the value for blah, okay, fzf ` --blah=(blahgen | fzf) ` oh I'm also missing [...]

This seems like it can help do the same thing more quickly, so I'm keen to give it a go.

I do like shell history though, a shame to just have a bunch of `navi` entries - I wonder if it could be faked; populated with the chosen command afterwards?

Oh, you just gave me an idea of turning fzf into a filter for $CMD --help. I need to try this.

I could write a zsh/bash plug-in so that it fills the prompt instead of running the command, in the same manner as ctrl-r. What do you think?

That would make the difference between me using this tool and not using this tool. Losing my shell history isn't worth a momentary ergonomics gain.

navi allows you to browse through cheatsheets (that you may write yourself or download from maintainers) and execute commands, prompting for argument values.

Thanks for releasing that Denis.

Combining both cheatsheets and a better UX is brilliant. Wish I had this years ago when trying to wrap my head around the shell.

not only this looks super awesome but this is also the first time i have seen a shell program architected in such a nice way.

Looks neat. I wish, though, there was a way to try it out in the browser as advertised without having to sign up or login. Might be a requirement of the site hosting the demo but whoever it is, forcing login is always and forever a deal breaker for me.

I didn't know it requires a login. Do you know any online free platform that can launch a given docker image?

Sorry but I do not.

This is really cool, I remember a similar effort being posted here a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121268

I really like this implementation!

Is there any way to run this on Windows, for people who use Cygwin or Git Bash? It seems really cool and useful

I think it should work out of the box. Did you get any error?

Looks like a really useful tool. Another tool I use like this is bropages or the `bro` command(1) which gives many examples similar to this for any command like ls, docker, etc. Sometimes it's useful when you don't have time to read the entire man page.

(1) https://www.ostechnix.com/3-good-alternatives-man-pages-ever...

Looks really nice;

I don't like the fact that an unknown command is executed before i can see/inspect what it is. Currently you won't even see what command was executed afterwards, you only see the result...

Would be nice to be able to also show the command below the item/result.

--print is possible, but it's cumbersome and not interactive: you can't "accept" the command after inspecting, and execute it.

Based on your input, the latest version has a preview window: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3226564/65380182-6...

I hope you like it!

That was fast, great!

This looks really cool. I’ve been building something similar in Crystal to scratch my own itch - https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/EEQqvAeWkAAx3-3.mp4

I want to use this, but I'm afraid of it be deprecated or not being maintained over time.

Is there a key command or way to find out what's below the cheat? For instance, I tried the "local ip address" example in the demo and it gave the IP address but now 'how' -- ifconfig? was it in a text file? env var? script?

Appears to be implemented here.

https://github.com/denisidoro/navi/blob/master/cheats/networ...

I'd nitpick on the implementation, but the point is you can change it. :)

On Linux, you can do something more robust that also supports IPv6 based on

    ip -o a sh up primary scope global

Based on your input, the latest version has a preview window: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3226564/65380182-6....

Alternatively, you can use the --print option

I hope you like it!

Same idea as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19436884 but more polished and faster.

I'll add it to the "alternatives" section

This is pretty cool! It’s great to see that lots of tools are trying to make the command line less intimidating, and adopting more friendly methods than the man pages.

About the cheatsheets itself, it might be great to share the cheatsheets with a project sharing somewhat similar goals, tldr.sh[0] (which focuses less on interactivity but more on completeness and practicality).

I’m more than excited to see the shell being more approachable. I have introduced the shell to quite a lot of my non-programmer friends with package managers and bulk renaming, but they don’t use the shell enough to memorize all of the commands. These efforts lower the barrier to use the shell... hence making the demonstration of the command line’s powers more easy.

[0] https://tldr.sh

Simply brilliant. Making bash easier

Would be neat if `navi git` started it up and applied a filter at the same time.

Cool! Will do it!

My only concern is that this way it would be impossible to add subcommands to navi

Let's say that in the future I want to add a command for removing a cheat (navi remove)

The way you described, it would look for snippets which contain "remove"

Any ideas?

oh this is really cool, thanks for sharing. i also really appreciate that you have links to other projects that offer similar features so people can contrast and compare and find what works best for them.

Similar concept: cheat.sh

I'll add it to the "alternatives" section

Does it also work in zsh?

Not sure what you mean, the shebang line is bash, so you need bash installed, but invoking it from zsh shouldn't cause a problem any more than invoking anything else could.

If you meant 'why is the shebang line bash, isn't it POSIX compliant' - I don't know.

Looks nice though. Not sure I fully understand how the chaining/'prompts you for arguments' works (from UX perspective) but keen to give it a go.

Great tool!!!

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