Terminal: Friendlier than it seems

It’s 2023. Why do terminals still exist?

Terminals are awkward, scary and old. Are you trying to be a try hard?

No.

Learning how to use the command line opens up a new avenue to using computers.

Automation

You can easily automate manual tasks with text compared to clicking buttons around

The power to chain commands together is so powerful, people get paid to do it 😎

No GUI? No problem

If you want to use a remote server that a cloud platform provides, interacting with the command line is optimal because sending graphics over the internet can be pretty slow.

Fun!

You don’t want to miss out on some cool open source projects

Many of those applications do not come with a GUI

Blazingly fast 🚀

She sells sea shells by the sea shore

A shell is the program that interprets the commands that you input. By default,

Frameworks everywhere

Popular shells, such as zsh have frameworks that can add some pizazz to your shell.

Turn your shell from this

To this

with oh-my-zsh

Alternative shells

The following are alternative shells:

• fish
  • Batteries-included
  • What I currently use
• nushell
  • Inspired by PowerShell
• elvish
  • Cool name
• xonsh
  • If you like Python

Basic navigation

• ls
  • Used for listing files in a directory to see what’s there
  • Without an argument: Prints out the files within the current directory
  • With an argument: Prints out the files within the argument directory
• cd
  • Stands for “change directory”
  • Move around directories

Working with files

• mv
  • Move or rename a file
• cat
  • Output the contents of a file
• touch
  • Create a file
• rm
  • Delete a file

What are flags?

Flags modify how a program behaves.

ls

When you pass a -a flag to ls, it will also include hidden files, A.K.A dotfiles since they start with dots

rm

• If you want to delete a directory, you’ll have to pass the -r keyword
• If you certainly want to delete a directory, pass the -rf keyword.

But reading through the manual is exhausting 😫

But

Before you copy paste and run the command, be sure it’s not a troll and you have some basic understanding of the flags provided.

For some commands, such as git, there is an option called dry-run that tells you what would happen but not actually do it.

Kind of like a sandbox

$ bash -n <script>

Perfect combo!

The | (pipe) operator allows you to perform some interesting combos with commands.

Another operator, > (redirect) allows you to redirect the output of the command somewhere else.

Making (crappy) code aesthetic

$ cat exercise_4.py | lolcat -a -s 60

A more practical example…

Your significant other gets mad at you if you don’t send them a “Good morning” text every morning, precisely at 7:00 AM. with a compliment.

With the power of automation, you can easily do so!

The script

-- Taken from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11812184/how-to-send-an-imessage-text-with-applescript-only-in-provided-service
on run {targetBuddyPhone, targetMessage}
    tell application "Messages"
        set targetService to 1st service whose service type = SMS
        set targetBuddy to buddy targetBuddyPhone of targetService
        send targetMessage to targetBuddy
    end tell
end run

Package managers

Installing applications from this:

To this

What’s a package manager

A package manager downloads, installs, uninstalls and automagically configures your system to be able to run the command that you want to install.

Examples of languages that use package managers

Windows

Disclaimer: I don’t main Windows

• Scoop
  • Installs packages within the current user’s directory so it doesn’t pollute the system path
  • My preferred package manager for windows
  • You don’t have to be an elevated user
• Chocolatey
  • Has more packages than Scoop
  • Elevated user required
• Winget
  • Official Windows package manager

MacOS

• Brew
  • The de facto package manager for MacOS
  • Many popular packages may be found here
• MacPorts
• Nix
  • For advanced users

Linux

• Depends on the distribution, but here’s a few examples

How to make the terminal more aesthetic and awesome

CLI applications are highly configurable to suit your needs.

Warning: The rabbit hole of customization is a deep one

Alternatives to common commands

• fd
  • An alternative to the find command.
  • Easier syntax compared to find
• rg
  • Stands for rip grep, which looks for patterns within files, similar to grep, but better
  • Can respect .gitignore rules
• exa
  • A modern ls
  • Colors files and directories by default

cd at the speed of your thoughts

Using cd to go to places takes too long 😫

I introduce…

z

cd in style

ranger is a great TUI file manager with vi keybinds and file previews

Custom Prompts

• Starship
  • Provides convenient information depending on the context of your current directory

When it sees a .java file, it prints 💩

An alternative terminal emulator

Default terminal emulators can get the job done but there are free alternatives that can enhance the terminal experience.

Some terminal emulators are cross-platform, which is nice if you want to keep the same configuration across different systems.

Windows

If you haven’t upgraded to Windows 11, then the Windows Terminal is amazing.

• Tab and window splitting out of the box for multi tasking
• GPU accelerated
• Easily switch between WSL2 and PowerShell
• Intuitive configuration

MacOS

My daily driver at the moment is kitty. I love it for the following reasons:

• GPU accelerated
• Built-in tabs and splits. No need for tmux, but it’s a terminal multiplexer that I highly recommend.
• Ligature and emoji support

iTerm2 and warp are also great alternatives

Linux

Notable ones that I’ve used in the past

• Alacritty
• WezTerm

Text editors

• neovim
• helix
• Emacs
• zee
• amp
• micro
  • Easiest to learn!

Checkout r/unixporn for inspirations

Trivia

Have my money Mr. Tim Cook

You just bought a brand new 14“ Macbook Pro with an M2 Pro, 32GB Unified Memory, and 1TB SSD Storage 😍

What shell does it ship with?

1. bash
2. Powershell
3. fish
4. zsh
5. Just run echo $SHELL 🤷

Busted

You have 5 seconds to delete all .mp4 files from your ’homework’ folder before your parents take your laptop but you also don’t want to delete your actual homework.

What do you do?

1. Sort by file type, select the correct range, right click, then hit delete and pray you got all of it
2. 🗿Press play at max volume🗿
3. rm *.mp4
4. touch *.mp4

Where did I save it?

After toiling away for days, you finish your data structures assignment 1 hour before it’s due. You close the hundred of tabs that you used to research for the solution. You admire your elegant recursive solution. You save all your files and you close your editor. You happily go to blackboard to upload the files but it’s not at the usual spot.

What do you do?

1. Manually look through your files one by one with cat.
2. Use either fd or find command.
3. Ask ChatGPT to redo the assignment for you.
4. Call it a day because GPA doesn’t matter.

Just copy paste?

You want to save the error output of your program to a file but it’s \(\left({{\sum\limits_{k=0}^\infty {\left({2 \over {3}}\right)^{k}}} - (\cos^2x + \sin^2x)}\right) \times {{-4e^{\pi i}}} + {\sum\limits_{k=0}^\infty {\left({1 \over {2}}\right)^{k}}}\) lines long.

What do you do?

1. Type each character one by one.
2. Scroll through your text editor’s terminal and copy it.
3. ./program > error.log
4. ./program | error.log

Getting ready for class

On the first day of your programming class, your professor asks you to install Java but they make you remotely log in to a Debian Linux server on campus and it doesn’t have a GUI. What command do you enter?

1. scoop install java
2. apt install java
3. brew install java
4. pacman -Syu java