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Comment by tych0 | Hacker News Reader

My life was also improved with some additional aliases in my git config:

[alias] dfif = diff idff = diff grpe = grep

I'm always puzzled how often the wheel gets re-invented ... https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config...

This is only for git commands though? `diff` and `grep` are their own thing.

Not when they're git subcommands, or misspelt git aliases as above.

Years ago Interlisp (does anybody here remember Interlisp?) had a function called DWIM (AKA Do What I Mean). It was an (optionally enabled) part of the REPL. If you typed something that made no sense, DWIM would try to figure out what you really meant to type, and offered to run the corrected command.

I have often wondered why that functionality disappeared, and why no one has tried to resurrect it. Search engines offer corrections all the time; why doesn't bash?

Zsh has this. But it mostly drives me mad.

Quaxity quuxity,

Teitelman's Interlisp

Has a DWIM feature that's

Really a screw;

MACLISP has evident

Superiority

Letting its customer

Mean what he do.

--The Great Quux (Guy L. Steele)

This poem indicates the frustrations that hackers had with DWIM at the time, which may explain why no one tried to resurrect it. Too-clever-by-half features intended to help tend to drive people nuts, especially when they fail. Even when they succeed, they interrupt the user's flow and become like that dialog box Windows users just dismiss.

https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

bashrc snippet (with extra newlines, for folks on mobile apps like materialistic that don't understand code formatting):

    # I do this an embarrassing amount

    alias fgf='fg'

    alias fgfg='fg'

    alias gf='fg'

    alias gfg='fg'

This resonates... from mine:

  alias emcas='emacs'

  alias emac='emacs'

  alias emasc='emacs'

  alias enacs='emacs'

  alias emas='emacs'

  alias emascs='emacs'

  alias eamcs='emacs'

  alias eemacs='emacs'

I have aliased `emacs --daemon` to `emacsd` and `emacsclient -t` to `e` because I use it so much.

You might be interested in https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

In a similar theme, I'm really glad I added ":q" as an alias for "exit" in my shell.

I must forget to give grep an filesystem path argument at least 10% of the time I invoke it. What I'm intending to do in all of those cases is recursively grep in the current directory. "Warning: recursive search of stdin" might be my most-seen console error message.

This used to happen to me constantly. I fixed it accidentally in switching to Ripgrep [0] which defaults to recursively searching the current directory. Bonus: it parallelises too!

Honourable mention also to FZF [1] which not only makes it trivial to locate a file in a directory tree, but has revolutionised my history use with its fuzzy matching.

[0] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

[1] - https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Nice! I create two-letter aliases, it truly helps:

gc = git checkout

gs = git status

etc...

Here's mine:

    alias g="git"
    __git_complete g _git # enable git autocompletion (braches, etc.)
    alias gc="git commit -am"
    alias gp="git push"
    __git_complete gp _git_checkout # checkout is more useful than _git_push because it autocompletes the branch
    alias ga="git add -A"
    alias gd="git diff"
    alias gb="git branch"
    alias gx="git checkout"
    __git_complete gx _git_checkout
    alias gs="git status"
    alias gl="git log"

Good collection! I have many of these, plus a slightly longer one for quick fixups that happen all too often:

    alias gcane="git commit --amend --no-edit"

probably you will like

  function fixup() {
    git commit --fixup=$1
  }
  function refixup() {
    git rebase -i --autosquash --autostash $1^1
  }

Nice, I have those same aliases.

Also not afraid to add multi-letter aliases if I find myself typing the same multi-word command over and over.

For example git diff master HEAD becomes gdmh

I have a ton of aliases but I have them all proceeded by an underscore. That way, I don't muck up native commands.

alias _up='sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y'

alias g=git

And then define one and two letter aliases for the things you do often:

st=status

l=log --with-prettiness

ap=add --patch

shit=reset

co=checkout

heh, I should make an alias for no-break space (code point 160/00A0) + 'grep', because I type it so often when I pipe and get:

Command ' grep' not found, but there are 17 similar ones. Maybe I'm not the only one :).

I handle this case with auto-correction for all one off errors via <tab>.

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