Show HN: Sensible Bash: An attempt at saner Bash defaults

https://github.com/mrzool/bash-sensible

by mrzool • 10 years ago

173 70 10 years ago

github.com

technimad• 10 years ago

In other words: making bash more like zsh

jjawssd2• 10 years ago

Came here to say the exact same thing.

Get zsh today. Give it a spin.

aerique2• 10 years ago

Or fish, which is basically zsh with sane defaults.

wyldfire3• 10 years ago

I hear a lot about it -- could you give me your favorite 2-3 features that make you prefer it over bash?

scrollaway• 10 years ago

Speaking of zsh, here's my zshrc file: https://github.com/jleclanche/dotfiles

Sane defaults, useful aliases, no dependencies and easy to expand upon. I made it mostly to give either a sensible default rc file to extend, or just a general high quality prompt.

TallGuyShort• 10 years ago

I'm a big fan of zsh. It doesn't seem to be solely focused on just "doing what you mean", which some of these tweaks seem aimed at; it seems aimed more at correctness. e.g., it would allow you to pass * .txt into a command if * .txt doesn't match anything. Bash will just assume I mean literally '* .txt' so you get different behaviour depending on whether or not there's a wildcard match. zsh has taught me the good habit of always using \* when I don't explicitly want shell expansion.

edit: spaces add after asterisks to avoid formatting weirdness

ridiculous_fish• 10 years ago

Heh, fish shell contributors had a long discussion of failed wildcard expansions at https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2394 . We all pretty much agreed that bash's passglob behavior is really bad.

zsh's default is much better. Though to be fair, bash-style passglob behavior can be enabled in zsh by setting NO_NOMATCH. zsh is still zsh, after all.

There's still plenty more wildcard nuttiness. A favorite is to execute a bare *: zsh will try to execute the first file, passing the other files as arguments!

onli• 10 years ago

I like it. It is not a complete revamp of bash to something else (the zsh-comment below is not fitting), it just enables some comfort features bash readily supports. One can argue about the case-insensitivity, but I see no other option that could be controversial. Just a small collection of sane defaults.

sapht• 10 years ago

This looks pretty sane overall. If you try this, be aware that it changes directory navigation, i.e. "Prepend cd to directory names automatically, so you can cd into directories just by typing their name", "Automatically correct spelling errors in arguments supplied to cd". I've tried these things and they drove me insane, so they're not good defaults for everyone.

otobrglez• 10 years ago

Hey guys! If you are interested in "different" shells and REPLs I suggest you check out Ammonite-REPL / Ammonite-Shell -http://www.lihaoyi.com/Ammonite/ It's written in Scala and well. It looks ql. :)

rout39574• 10 years ago

May be an old-fart prejudice, but my eyes cross to think that 'dash and underline are equivalent' might be a desired thing. Making bash be clever seems like a pile of pitfalls.

To each their own.

bpchaps3• 10 years ago

Yeah, I don't get this one, either. This seems far away from sane.

What's the rationality behind it?

mrzool4• 10 years ago

I don't have any file or folder name starting with a dash, while underscores are pretty common. Treating dashes and underscores as equivalents saves you one keystroke (i.e. you can type `cd -folder<tab>` instead of `cd _folder<tab>`).

chairleader• 10 years ago

If you have an inconsistent naming convention in your directory structure, this could speed things up/save some memorization.

I'm not a fan of adding features that make poor choices less painful, but I could see using it for a little while as I'm getting to know a non-ideal environment.

mrzool4• 10 years ago

That's just for tab completion, not overall. I agree that that would be far from sane.

ymse• 10 years ago

Minor nitpick: why is the session history larger than the maximum file size?

It always annoyed me that HISTTIMEFORMAT is not set by default. Without it, log entries are simply not timestamped at all.

The readline tweaks were news to me, thanks.

LukeShu2• 10 years ago

HISTFILESIZE is kind of a misnomer. It's the maximum number of lines in HISTFILE, where HISTSIZE is the maximum number of commands. If you have HISTTIMEFORMAT set, then each command gets at least 2 lines, plus the possibility of multi-line commands.

wyldfire3• 10 years ago

Prepend cd to directory names automatically, so you can cd into directories just by typing their name;

I'm pretty sure this is a solution to a problem I don't have today.

Treat hyphens and underscores as equivalent;
Automatically correct spelling errors during tab-completion;

I'm terrified to put this in my shell. Then again, it's not all-or-nothing:

cherry-pick the options you like most ... everything is open for discussion

jimminy• 10 years ago

Prepending cd for directory names would be kind of bad for me.

I tend to create local scripts to initialize project environments using their root directory name. So the automatic prepending would make the action ambiguous as a command.

hamidnazari• 10 years ago

That's the first thing I disable every time I set up oh-my-zsh on a new box. I think it should not be a default behaviour and should only be enabled if needed.

hornetblack• 10 years ago

> Automatically correct spelling errors during tab-completion; I'm terrified to put this in my shell.

I had it in once (it's one the options in zsh setup)

Once I was cleaning my home directory:

    rm -rf tec<Tab>
    rm -rf IdeaProjects<Ret>

I'm a bit too quick to press enter after tab. So i deleted the wrong folder.

I do still have it auto correct case. So `doc<Tab> -> Documents`

alphapapa2• 10 years ago

This is why I delete to trash, even from a terminal. I use the trash-cli package on Debian/Ubuntu.

Also:

    alias rm 'rm -i'

Gratsby2• 10 years ago

Sensible Bash... like Fish or Z Shell?

startling• 10 years ago

fish is not even a sh, much less a bash.

Gratsby2• 10 years ago

That's true, but everytime I say the words z shell, someone always says "Fish!", so I figured I'd pre-empt them for once. Go figure it would backfire on me. LOL.

ChrisArgyle• 10 years ago

Some great ideas here--a lot of them solve problems I've personally had with bash over the past 15 years--but plenty of these feel like solutions in search of problems.

I'm tempted to post my own commentary but I'd probably make the same mistakes. What would be really fantastic is a usability study of bash to see what the common pain points are.

rejap• 10 years ago

a lot of this stuff is present in cygwin but by default commented out. Something what made me more productive is a cd_func:

out of .bashrc:

function cd_func

This function defines a 'cd' replacement function capable of keeping,

displaying and accessing history of visited directories, up to 10 entries.

To use it, uncomment it, source this file and try 'cd --'.

acd_func 1.0.5, 10-nov-2004

Petar Marinov, http:/geocities.com/h2428, this is public domain

azeirah• 10 years ago

The site redirects to something unrelated, is your link broken?

LukeShu2• 10 years ago

I've got `alias cd=pushd` in my .bashrc. It keeps track of visited directories as a stack (arbitrarily deep).

thom_nic3• 10 years ago

I feel like discussion of 'sensible bash defaults' is incomplete without mention of .inputrc. My most "can't live without it" setting for bash is actually an .inputrc setting:

    # From http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2003/papers/bash_tips/
    # Incremental searching with Up and Down is configured in .inputrc
    "\e[A": history-search-backward
    "\e[B": history-search-forward

... so if I type `ssh <up arrow>` I get the last command that started with `ssh`, not the last command I ran. oh-my-zsh thankfully does this by default as well. But I still use my .inputrc on server boxen where I don't want/need to install a different default shell.

Also worth noting that all of those `bind` commands in OP's script are actually .inputrc lines if you remove the `bind` and surrounding quotes.

ajross• 10 years ago

This is why these things are so personal. I'd hate this. The up/down bindings are absolutely tied to specific command orders in my head. I need to know that "three commands back" is wherever I was in the sequence of commands that I'm repeating.

If I'm trying to semantically query my history (for "ssh") in this case I'll use the ^R binding to incrementally search the history, or literally grep ~/.history for what I'm looking for.

That's not to say that you're "wrong", just that calling these things "sensible defaults" is sort of missing the point. Nothing about them is sensible for everyone.

omalsa04• 10 years ago

If you just press "up" without typing anything first then it works as you expect. I find ^R annoying if I've already started typing the command and then realise I can search the history (although that's probably configurable).

Once you get used to it, the only downside of up/down history search is when you ever use a shell that doesn't do it and you feel lost.

plorg• 10 years ago

I have it as

    "\e[5~": history-search-backward
    "\e[6~": history-search-forward

This allows you to continue using arrows for absolute chronological history then use PageUp and PageDn for history search.

You could also change it to

    "\e[5~": history-substring-search-backward
    "\e[6~": history-substring-search-forward

if you want to search for a string match anywhere in the command rather than at the beginning. It might be 'substr' rather than 'substring' depending on your Bash version.

Obviously the utility of this depends on your keyboard layout and config, as much as it does on personal preferences.

You can see the full list of commands at https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Commands-....

thom_nic3• 10 years ago

Yup, it changes the default behavior slightly but as @omalsa04 mentioned if you just hit <up> without typing anything it will iterate through the whole command history, the same as it would without this binding.

insanebits• 10 years ago

So that is where it actually comes from. I was wondering for some time now. This is one of my favorite features on oh-my-zsh!

It mostly helps when you type complicated command and after half an hour you need to repeat it for some reason. You type the command you used, and hit a arrow up.

thom_nic3• 10 years ago

I don't think zsh uses the .inputrc file, actually. I've actually never looked into how oh-my-zsh does it.

ianmcgowan• 10 years ago

I have to comment just to say "thanks!" - don't know how I lived this long without knowing this one trick. This just blew my mind!

riquito• 10 years ago

Does anyone know if bashscript could be updated to allow spaces between assignment? I can't see how it would break existing programs (but I'm sure there's a catch) and scripts would be much cleaner (and less of an headache).

opejn• 10 years ago

A breaking example might be trying to find lines containing an "=" in a file:

    grep = my_file

Also a problem is the syntax for running a program with environment assignments that apply only to the program:

    env1=foo env2=bar env3= my_program

Note that under POSIX rules, "env3" here is assigned a zero-length string. Making these sorts of assignments work with spaces around the equal signs would open up a can of worms.

burgerdev• 10 years ago

Most of these are included in /usr/bin/fish :)

heydonovan• 10 years ago

Came here to say this! Got tired of the little quirks, and never looked back.

alphapapa2• 10 years ago

Yep, for interactive use, Fish is fantastic. Bash is still a better choice for most shell scripting though.

Also recommend using something like Percol or fzf for filter-as-you-type command history.

modeless• 10 years ago

These history settings should clearly be the real defaults. I wonder how difficult it would be to get them changed upstream?

Upstreaming would also allow improvements, for example PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a' doesn't update history until the next prompt is displayed. If you close your terminal while a program is running then the last command entered is not saved.

justin_vanw• 10 years ago

I thought 'sensible bash' was called zsh.

Just kidding, but not really, zsh is great and basically compatible with Bash, check it out.

LASR• 10 years ago

Or just use fish. Why is this even a conversation in 2016?

dlitz• 10 years ago

It would be nice if bash had a more discoverable version of the 'help' command for new users.

Right now, someone (say, a bright 12-year-old) who opens up a terminal for the very first time and types "help" is greeted with this lovely mess:

     compgen [-abcdefgjksuv] [-o option]  >  return [n]
     complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-pr] [-DE] >  select NAME [in WORDS ... ;] do COMM>
     compopt [-o|+o option] [-DE] [name ..>  set [-abefhkmnptuvxBCHP] [-o option->
     continue [n]                            shift [n]
     coproc [NAME] command [redirections]    shopt [-pqsu] [-o] [optname ...]
     declare [-aAfFgilnrtux] [-p] [name[=v>  source filename [arguments]
     dirs [-clpv] [+N] [-N]                  suspend [-f]
     disown [-h] [-ar] [jobspec ...]         test [expr]
     echo [-neE] [arg ...]                   time [-p] pipeline
     enable [-a] [-dnps] [-f filename] [na>  times
     eval [arg ...]                          trap [-lp] [[arg] signal_spec ...]
     exec [-cl] [-a name] [command [argume>  true
     exit [n]                                type [-afptP] name [name ...]
     export [-fn] [name[=value] ...] or ex>  typeset [-aAfFgilrtux] [-p] name[=va>
     false                                   ulimit [-SHabcdefilmnpqrstuvxT] [lim>
     fc [-e ename] [-lnr] [first] [last] o>  umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
     fg [job_spec]                           unalias [-a] name [name ...]
     for NAME [in WORDS ... ] ; do COMMAND>  unset [-f] [-v] [-n] [name ...]
     for (( exp1; exp2; exp3 )); do COMMAN>  until COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done
     function name { COMMANDS ; } or name >  variables - Names and meanings of so>
     getopts optstring name [arg]            wait [-n] [id ...]
     hash [-lr] [-p pathname] [-dt] [name >  while COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done
     help [-dms] [pattern ...]               { COMMANDS ; }
    user@host:~$

Show HN: Sensible Bash: An attempt at saner Bash defaults

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