What's Your Go to Command When You Open a Terminal? | Hacker News Reader

What's Your Go to Command When You Open a Terminal?

for some reason I always enter ls, yet I already know what's in my home folder, its a reflex at this point.

I use zsh and like keeping my terminal clear, so I found a zsh script called almostontop which clears on pressing enter.

link: https://github.com/Valiev/almostontop/blob/master/README.md

Can you run ‘git status’ or allow it to show history from certain commands?

Of course it only clears when you run a new command, or press enter. Basically think of it like typing clear after running a command. You can also scroll up and find the last output.

For people who want this without downloading a script, pressing cmd-k on a Mac (or equiv on other operating systems) will do this quickly on demand.

I guess that's my goto.

Ahh, useful thanks. I've been using Ctrl-l for years. cmd-k is an easier 'chord' for me on the kinesis so I'll switch.

If you are logging in in multiple *nix systems I suggest you keep the Ctrl+l.

I started to notice that the more I adopt in terminal specific commands to MacOS the hard is to be productive while I login to various systems.

I want also to force myself (but did not do it yet) to use a simpler Vim configuration. Maybe just line numbers so that when I login into a new system I should not need any plugin or any other shortcuts. Still I like my .vimrc file but I plan to do this in near future.

I assume you're talking about physically logging into different machines since cmd-k is a shortcut key for the terminal and will work regardless of which machine you ssh into.

cmd-k works well for me since I don't think I've personally logged in directly to a non-Mac *nix-like system in 15+ years.

vim is different since it requires configuration on the same system.

This superuser explains some subtle differences between the two commands: https://superuser.com/questions/819593/what-is-the-differenc...

I started using 'w' as a habit on BBS's back in the day... then kept that up when I had an account on super computers in high school...(https://newfutures.aps.edu/supercomputing) it's still muscle memory for me. I have no idea why as most of the machines I'm on now, I'm the only one with an account.

Old habits die hard. It's just muscle memory at this point.

I have some some shortcuts to open some of my most used "Go to" SSH locations, I'm too lazy to manually write ssh root@192... so cmd+opt+r ssh into my router, cmd+opt+p ssh into RPi etc...

`~/.ssh/config` is pretty awesome

Yes, obviously my keys are already stored, I've already said that im lazy? =)

I always go to the same place, my programming directory, so for years I've done the sequence:

{cd Pr<tab><enter>cd c<tab><enter>}

Takes me to my current project folder, and there I can use gcc or vim or whatever I need to do. I thought about shortening it or setting my terminal to start in that directory but the ritual is important to me, it sets me in the right mood, for whatever reason.

I created a command that cd to the right project, and optionally start docker, dev tools and other things related to that project.

.bashrc runs tmux for me automatically but only if I ssh in. It removed just enough friction from using tmux that I finally put in the time to learn it. Would recommend/10

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27613209/how-to-automati...

Is there a point to using tmux for someone who mostly works on their local machine?

I would say having the exact same keyboard shortcuts for interacting with windows, panes, etc for both your desktop as well as any other machine you work with is worthwile having.

cd to get to the directory of interest. After that, probably workon.

It depends what I am trying to do; often the first command will be cd (to access whatever directory I will intend to work on), but not always.

Sometimes ls.

Other times I'll hit enter a few times and then Ctrl+L to clear the screen.

Sort of feels like tapping my fingers on the desk.

Probably "pwd", from the days when it wasn't the prompt / my profile / the shell I was using

The command I opened that terminal for.

history | grep <thing>

I use a number of tools and I've often forgotten an individual command, or when I'm using tools like curl or docker that have a long single line command that I know I can't remember.

Oh man, I'm about to blow your mind.

ctrl+r (reverse history search) + https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

is a game changer

Neat, I'll check it out.

Lol, same here. ls and then clear. Now I'm ready to do whatever I want

99% of the time, I'm ssh'ing to a remote host

So it's `ssh <host>`

no matter what I do `ls` as well

cat .ssh/config

ssh nameIforgot:/to/fix

ls -l as a force of habit I guess

You probably know this but:

ll and la are shorthand for ls -l and ls -la

tmux

I'm sure you can automate this.

Not everything has to be "automated" and "optimized" all the time.

clear

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