Bash Tips & Tricks for a More Efficient Command Line | #TipsAndTricks #CLI #commandline
Before you click through to this awesome post by Steve Owens (from Red Hat) for opensource.com know that this is not exactly a quick read, especially if there’s something you’re intrigued by and find yourself tinkering with at the command line to better understand his text. As an OpenShift consultant for Red Hat, Steve is clearly a seasoned veteran of the CLI and even experienced devs might pick up some insight from his article, which is broken up into sections of sorts:
Working with Bash history
Navigation and file naming
Bash key bindings
Miscellaneous tips
These hidden features and shortcuts will help you perform some of the most common Bash functions more efficiently.
As the default shell for many of the Linux and Unix variants, Bash includes a wide variety of underused features, so it was hard to decide what to discuss. Ultimately, I decided to focus on Bash tips that make day-to-day activities easier.
As a consultant, I see a plurality of diverse environments and work styles. I drew on this experience to narrow the tips to four broad categories: Terminal and line tricks, navigation and files, history, and helpful commands. These categories are completely arbitrary and serve more to organize my own thoughts than as any kind of definitive classification. Many of the tips included here might subjectively fit in more than one category.
Without further ado, here are some of the most helpful Bash tricks I have encountered.