Useful Terminal Tips

If you are like me, you use the command line daily and like any tool that you use for many tasks, it's worth spending time learning how to use them. The following are some quick tips to improve your command line experience.

Keyboard Shortcuts

ctrl-r : history search commands
ctrl-a : go to beginning of line
ctrl-e : go to end of line
ctrl-u : delete everything BEFORE the cursor
ctrl-k : delete everything AFTER the cursor

Must-have Tools

fzf: ctrl+r (reverse search) on steroids (https://github.com/junegunn/fzf) - I highly encourage to install the optional tools and shortcuts, it includes to use ctrl+r
autojump (https://github.com/wting/autojump): j foo will jump directories to my /whatever/foo directory.
jq: (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) - Command-line JSON processor.

dotfiles

dotfiles is commonly referred to repositories that store your terminal environment settings. This can be a huge time-saver when you are getting your terminal environment up and running.

For more information and inspiration, visit https://dotfiles.github.io/

Or you can look at my dotfiles

Other Tips

create aliases for everything in ~/.bashrc to speed things up
echo $? : show the exit code of my last command.
sudo !! : run the previous command as sudo (so useful when you forgot to sudo a long command)

Using the caret (^) character to correct mistakes.

Imagine you write something like this: npm i eslunt

You wanted eslint, not eslunt! Easy fix: ^eslunt^eslint

This is especially useful if you are passing multiple arguments on your command.

ctrl+r for reverse searching of previous command

add a "# tags" at any commands end to use above for future. Lets say you have a ssh into multiple servers

$ ssh -Uasfd host1 # server1
$ ssh -Uaiouhqe host2 # server2 then later, ctrl+r -> and type ver1

Update: Even More Tips and Tools

For way more tips, check out onceupon/Bash-Oneliner
Julia Evans - A list of new(ish) command line tools
[curl converter(https://curlconverter.com/)
Szymon Stepniak jq tutorials on YouTube. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3