Damn Useful: When You Forget to type Sudo

by r00k • 18 years ago

25 26 18 years ago

yan2• 18 years ago

You can also get at the arguments of the previous command line with !!:n, where n is the position of the argument.

i.e.

  host:test user$ touch one two three four five
  host:test user$ ls
  five	four	one	three	two
  host:test user$ cat four
  host:test user$ echo !!:1
  echo four
  four

Also, "Esc, dot" is an awesome bash shortcut. (Press them consecutively, not concurrently). It inserts the last argument of the previous command in place. So if you're doing something to the same file, Esc, . will usually bring up the file name.

i.e.

  host:test user$ cat five
  host:test user$ touch [Esc, .]

lanaer• 18 years ago

Easier than [Esc, .] is !$. Does the same thing.

yan2• 18 years ago

Either work, it all amounts to habit. My fingers are just used to hitting esc, . and it's nice to see the argument get inserted inline as I'm editing.

matstc• 18 years ago

Except you can press [esc, .] multiple times.

callahad• 18 years ago

In most "Esc then X" cases, you should also be able to type Alt+X, which jives better with some folks' preferences.

paulgb2• 18 years ago

If anyone is interested in more of these tricks, this document was on HN a while back: http://www.scribd.com/full/2933314?access_key=key-2lwqsfr2e5...

kqr22• 18 years ago

Direct link to pdf on author's web site:

http://www.deer-run.com/~hal/UnixCommandLineKungFu.pdf

paulgb2• 18 years ago

Thanks, that was actually the link I wanted to post. When I copied it I realized it was google's big messy click-through URL, so I went for the next result instead.

randomwalker2• 18 years ago

Sounds like some kid discovering a bash feature, nothing more. May I post a link to a page with a whole lotta nifty bash tricks instead? http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2003/papers/bash_tips/

r00k2• 18 years ago

I'm "the kid."

I intentionally restrained myself to one tip. See http://codeulate.com/?p=21 for the reasoning.

randomwalker2• 18 years ago

That makes total sense for your blog -- getting one tip a day in your RSS reader is way better for learning them than looking at them all at once.

However, I don't think it makes sense to post it on HN. If all the posts on the front page were little snippets, the conversation would quickly degenerate.

Splines• 18 years ago

Stop reminding me that I'm on Windows

gojomo• 18 years ago

Get cygwin.

Shamiq2• 18 years ago

I didn't really like cygwin when on windows. For some reason, whenever I would hit delete, instead of going backwards and erasing the previous character, it just spaced me forwards. This meant I had to count the number of times I hit backspace then start typing whatever it was I needed in the middle of the next line, surrounded by whitespace.

I gave up and switched to Ubuntu.

nuclear_eclipse• 18 years ago

Get CoLinux [ http://www.colinux.org/ ]

Edit: even better resource: http://colinux.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

bprater• 18 years ago

Dual-boot, my friend!

apu• 18 years ago

Lots of bash tips, organized like bash.org: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=142045

kqr22• 18 years ago

Also:

http://www.catonmat.net/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-bash-co...

wooby• 18 years ago

Big fan of this: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/OpenSource/Conceptu...

tlb• 18 years ago

That's not something you want to optimize.

When working on a production box, I've trained myself to type the command without sudo, then actually take my hands off the keyboard and sit on my hands while I ponder what might go wrong with the command. Then I hit ^A sudo space return.

nihilocrat• 18 years ago

Imagine an angry father yelling for his son. “Sudo!!” Sudo runs down from his room, sees the command he was supposed to be in front of, and executes it immediately.

No, no, he's got it all wrong. The son then says "Okay, I'll do it in a minute" and proceeds to go back to playing WoW or whatever he does for fun.

Dobbs• 18 years ago

The way mentioned in the article, might be slightly easier but as I am a vim user and have the vi mode enabled in bash,my command chain for this action is:

^[ k I sudo

Esc (^[ = Esc) exits to command mode, k goes to the previous command, shift-i moves the cursor to the beginning of the line and sudo is well sudo.

Slightly more complex but it is reflex from all of the other programs I use.

kaens• 18 years ago

If this is new to anyone here, I strongly recommend reading the BASH man page. There's a whole lot of time saving features there.

Damn Useful: When You Forget to type Sudo

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