hr for your terminal

by C0d3r • 12 years ago

82 88 12 years ago

Tired of not finding things in your terminal because there's a lot of logs and garbage? Tired of destroying the Enter key by creating a "void zone" in your terminal so that you can see the error that you're trying to debug?

Use the old <hr /> tag, but in your terminal

codegeek• 12 years ago

love useful utilities like this. Nothing rocket science but handy. I updated the README.md btw and pull request already accepted. Thx :)

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

Thanks! This is actually what I love doing, small utilities to help me and others which are not that fancy but get the work done and are compatible with my workflow.

chrisamiller• 12 years ago

Simple and useful - thanks!

yoha2• 12 years ago

hr(){printf '=%.0s' $(seq $COLUMNS)}

sp332• 12 years ago

What language is that?

sdfjkl• 12 years ago

zsh

sheetjs2• 12 years ago

bash shell, although some whitespace is missing:

    hr() { printf '=%.0s' $(seq $COLUMNS); }

printf is a bash builtin

azinman2• 12 years ago

nice and simple! added to my .zshrc :)

antimora• 12 years ago

Here is a copy-n-paste to your bash prompt:

    function hr { printf '=%.0s' $(seq $COLUMNS); }

rcfox• 12 years ago

Anyone know how to add this sort of thing before the prompt in `git add -p` ?

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

You can create an alias in git like this:

vim ~/.gitconfig

    ap = !hr && git add -p # Add this line to your file

IgorPartola7• 12 years ago

Great idea, one random nitpick:

    curl https://raw.github.com/LuRsT/hr/master/hr > ~/bin/hr

is just evil. That's a great way to own a machine. You can even read the code today, but run the command tomorrow when someone had replaced the code with a giant exploit. Not saying there is a better way to distribute something like this that is as easy to use, but damn, this is just asking for trouble.

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

I know that, I did not want to be evil writing that in the instructions but that's the best way to copy that file, also this is a file to be executable, so even if you use wget you are asking for trouble, downloading a file to your $PATH and making it executable, do you have any idea on how to improve the instructions?

IgorPartola7• 12 years ago

I honestly don't know of another way, other than encouraging the user to read the code.

mattgreenrocks• 12 years ago

Make a Homebrew version :)

vezzy-fnord• 12 years ago

Practical example: http://russianroulette.sh

bodyfour• 12 years ago

How is it worse than: $ ./configure && make

I guarantee you that it'd be easier to hide something nefarious in 3000 lines of autoconf boilerplate.

IgorPartola7• 12 years ago

It's not. And at least the download here is over HTTPS, not HTTP. But you are right, both are vulnerable unless the user is ready to be cautious.

timmclean2• 12 years ago

Run the command, then look through the local copy to make sure it's safe. Once you have downloaded the code, there's no way that the project owner could change your copy.

IgorPartola7• 12 years ago

Yup, that's the only way to see if what you are downloading is safe. Unfortunately, not many people will do that.

Crito2• 12 years ago

I think you may have mistaken that for the "curl ...|sh" idiom?

maw2• 12 years ago

Not really: unless you inspect ~/bin/hr before using or updating it, both boil down to the same thing.

jaredsohn2• 12 years ago

I just built a nodejs version of this, available on npm.

http://www.github.com/jaredsohn/hr

Install it via 'npm -g install hr'.

A benefit of this is you can also use it in your node programs (and clientside JS if you use something like browserify.)

And like any software you install that doesn't run in a sandbox, you should look at the source before running it or have some other reason for trusting it. (I briefly thought about how ironic it would be to have this program do something evil, but decided against it.)

leif• 12 years ago

When are these comments going to stop? Everyone lazy enough is going to keep suggesting "curl install" and everyone lazy enough is going to keep using it, and everyone that has something worth protecting and cares enough is either not going to use it or is going to audit it anyway, and comments like this aren't going to move anyone between those camps.

If you all think "curl install" is so evil then build something secure to replace it. It's got to be as easy from a "package maintainer" as well as a user's perspective, and you have to figure out some way to validate security. But until then, warning people that they should read code they execute is a waste of bandwidth.

falcolas• 12 years ago

It's never a waste of bandwidth if it prompts one person to do the critical checks and prevents them from being owned.

middleclick• 12 years ago

Nice and useful! Thanks!

NickSharp• 12 years ago

Love it. Thanks!

loopj• 12 years ago

I currently just mash <return> <return> <return> to create a visual break in my terminal output.

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

Me too, and it's exactly why I made this script :)

comex• 12 years ago

Some other characters you may want to substitute into the script:

――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅

██████████████████████████████████████████████████

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

Oh yeah! Definitely! Although, to make this non-unicode compatible, it's better to have a cleaner default like '='.

But if you really want another character by default, you can do this:

    alias hr='hr █'

roadnottaken• 12 years ago

Love this, thanks!

tgrochowicz• 12 years ago

i forked this to do something immature instead because i'm 12 years old.

$ dong 8=================================D # Till the end of your terminal window $

https://github.com/tgrochowicz/hr

rm445• 12 years ago

Hardly cause to fork a project - surely it would make more sense as an option to the original?

jsonau• 12 years ago

should rename it to hrd

jamestomasino• 12 years ago

Great little script. I tossed it into by bash functions and added a bit of error checking and output formatting: https://github.com/jamestomasino/bash-scripts/blob/master/.f...

Aardwolf• 12 years ago

Much simpler: having a colored prompt works quite well to solve the mentioned problem.

PS1="\[\033[0;31m\][\u@\h:\w]$\[\033[0m\]"

jethro_tell• 12 years ago

Or a colored prompt with a timestamp and hostname, great with a huge scrollback.

PS1='\[\033[1;32m\](\A) <\h> [$PWD \$ \[\033[m\]'

Edit: Using tmux with a 200,000 line scrollback, you can also search scrollback based on the hour in which you ran the command. A search for "(12:" would put you right in the ball park.

wylee• 12 years ago

I just stuck this in my PS1:

    hr() {
        printf '=%.0s' $(seq $((${COLUMNS} - 20)))
    }

    PS1="${GREY}\d ${RED}\$(hr)${GREY} \t"

It dynamically adjusts to the width of the terminal, and looks like this:

    Mon Feb 10 ======================================== 16:30:30

My complete BASH prompt: https://bitbucket.org/wyatt/dotfiles/src/25cb260a05b68dd81a5...

abruzzi• 12 years ago

The one problem is that the ability or substitute a different character doesn't test for length. I want to do: hr --==##==

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

That's an awesome idea, hold on...

jaredsohn2• 12 years ago

My nodejs version does this. (npm -g install hr).

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

Hi! I implemented your idea, now you can do that! Thanks for your input!

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

I'm interested why they use "seq"? [seq can take a single value too apparently, perhaps they did half width rulers with "seq 2 $(tputs cols)"?]

Why doesn't

    !/bin/bash
    j=$(tput cols); for i in {1..$j}; do echo -n "#";done

work, presumably there's some escape that needs doing?

The alternative:

    !/bin/bash
    for (( c=1 ; c<=$COLUMNS; c++ )); do echo -n "#";done

seems fine?

Also BASH has $COLUMNS builtin FWIW, though portability explains use of tput.

I like it, should be a standard command, including options to specify width as a proportion and to add whitespace lines. Code for this must be in almost every shell script.

pdw2• 12 years ago

Both of those would work in bash, but they're non-standard extensions. The seq construction would work in any POSIX shell, though the seq command itself is still non-standard I think.

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

Sorry, the first doesn't work - I was asking if anyone knew why. The second works in BASH, but it's bashism as you note.

ehamberg• 12 years ago

If you want a solid line, you could use U+2501 (━) from the set of box drawing characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character):

    <━> 9473, U+2501 BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY HORIZONTAL

    hr(){printf '━%.0s' $(seq $COLUMNS)}

thekaleb• 12 years ago

And now it works in the bourne shell!

Fasebook2• 12 years ago

If you want to conform to ANSI, just use two dashes (--) or ASCII, the box drawing character, the source of the unicode variant. This is important because it remains the primary font in the core of any EGA and VGA-compatible graphics card (basically all graphics cards).

eurleif• 12 years ago

ASCII doesn't have box drawing characters. ASCII is codepoints 0-127.

chjj• 12 years ago

Some terminals support ACS (with SCLD) but not unicode. It might be better to use ACS:

    $ hr() { printf '\e(0'; printf 'q%.0s' $(seq $(tput cols)); printf '\e(B'; }

Same thing, but potentially more portable.

edit: Could also use tput instead of $COLUMNS. Sometimes the $COLUMNS may not always be updated (bash's checkwinsize option).

pdw2• 12 years ago

For portability you should also use \033 (the octal code) instead of \e, which is non-standard.

ppurka2• 12 years ago

Indeed, printf is shorter. I use it in a similar fashion in my own script [1], which can be made to behave like hr() (haven't tried shells other than bash):

    centered_output '=' ''

[1] https://github.com/ppurka/sh_functions/blob/master/my_bash_f...

nagrom2• 12 years ago

I don't understand - is there something better about this than the 'clear' command?

Ujio2• 12 years ago

Clear doesn't do anything to differentiate new output from old.

nagrom2• 12 years ago

It makes an entire blank line, which is sufficient if you have a lot of textual output. It also gets rid of the old stuff from the screen - if you're running a window manager, you can then scroll up if you need the old stuff.

ramses0• 12 years ago

I like to use terminal colors so it's red, as well as allowing controlling width, but defaulting to terminal width.

  $ cat ~/bin/br
  #!/bin/sh
  if [ "$1" == "" ] ; then
          COLS=`tput cols`
  elif [ "$1" == "--help" ] ; then
          echo "$0: Prints a red line across the screen. or $0 <##> for a specific width."
          echo "$0:   br ; grep -ir foo *  -- place a marker to see where results begin / end."
          echo "$0:   br 80 ; cat file     -- use to check for overly long lines."
          exit
  else
          COLS=$1
  fi
  LINE=""
  for (( x=0 ; x<$COLS ; x++ ));  do LINE="$LINE-" ; done
  echo -e '\E[47;0m'"\033[1m$LINE\033[0m"

lstamour2• 12 years ago

This has me wondering, why haven't terminal windows evolved functionally to better support history, scrollback buffers jumping or markers, selection with a mouse, auto-complete hints, etc. Instead we're limited to hacks like this or the screenshot at http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3650/would-it-be-pos... ... and no, I don't think "use emacs" is an acceptable answer ;-)

Oh and instead of adding blank lines with "Enter", I often just type "clear" and hit return. Bingo, tons of whitespace now added.

C0d3r9• 12 years ago

I use clear too, far too often, but with tmux, when you scroll up, you don't get the tons of whitespace that you get with just the terminal :(

datr• 12 years ago

I've often wondered if there is a terminal which supported the "jump to previous input" functionality described in the stackexchange question but I've never seen anything better than what is mentioned in the answers. I've heard Plan 9's Rio supported something like this but searching around, I can't see any mention of it.

ppurka2• 12 years ago

I think terminology [1] is quite promising, although it doesn't yet do all of the above.

[1] http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology

lstamour2• 12 years ago

Huh. From there I discovered http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit/

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2559734

"What happened to TermKit?" on Reddit with a reply from the author: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/137kd9/18_month...

I'm thinking we'll need a terminal window that interfaces with bash but has overlays in HTML and other controls for scrollback, etc. Maybe a fork of an existing terminal.

gnachman• 12 years ago

The iTerm2 nightly builds have everything you asked for. See here for info about marks in history: https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/MarksAndNotes

More info about the general idea of integrating the terminal with the shell, including command history: http://www.iterm2.com/shell_integration.html

I expect FinalTerm will do something along the lines of marks as well, and has introduced some cool ideas with history.

Of course, iTerm2 has has had autocomplete for years.

If you'd like a shinier <hr> in iTerm2, you could use this script:

#!/bin/bash # usage: hr image.png printf '\033]1337;File=inline=1;width='`tput cols`';height=8px;preserveAspectRatio=0:' base64 < $1 printf '\007'

gamacodre• 12 years ago

If you like this idea and are stuck in Windows, this does the same thing:

    @set @jScript=1;/*
    @for /f "tokens=1,2" %%w in ('mode con:') do @if "%%w" == "Columns:" set cols=%%x
    @cscript /noLogo /E:jScript  "%~f0" %cols% %1 =
    @Goto :EOF
    */line='';while(line.length<WScript.Arguments(0))line+=WScript.Arguments(1);
    WScript.StdOut.Write(line.substr(0,WScript.Arguments(0)));

Save as hr.cmd and stick it somewhere in your path.

KiwiCoder• 12 years ago

Perl on Windows;

   perl -e "$_=`mode`;/ns:\s+(\d+)/;print '='x$1"

farginay• 12 years ago

I've long wanted a shell with logical separation of each command/output pair.

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

I thought control + l was a fairly well known hotkey?

it inserts a terminal worth of line breaks

num• 12 years ago

Fortunately this is what I've used Figlet (http://www.figlet.org) or Toilet (http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/toilet) for:

    $ figlet -- ----------
    
    
     _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
    |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|

chris-martin• 12 years ago

PS1="$(hr -) $PS1"

Beautiful.

Now I need a way to make this happen in SBT too.

hr for your terminal

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