• u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    I’d like something like on Cisco equipment.

    Tab completes a command
    ? prints possible options with brief descriptions, filtered by starting letters if you already typed anything
    if there is just one option left, you can just use it directly, so you can write shortened commands (similar to ip commands on Linux)

    • antimidas@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      4 days ago

      That would be the dream indeed. It’s so fluid after you learn it. Other networking equipment often has good configuration CLIs as well (like juniper and vyos), but Cisco is probably the best in my experience. It’s also nice how consistent they are across generations.

      You can get about as close as it’s possible in a normal operating system with zsh and plugins like zsh-autocomplete. Bash tries to pick up the possible alternatives from context as well (with tab suggestions) that act somewhat like ? on Cisco CLI, but implementing it is left up to the command itself to provide for the shell. Many commands luckily provide very robust autocompletion to bash out-of-the-box, especially if installed via the system package manager.

      Unfortunately we’ll probably never reach the point of actual configuration CLIs since they only have a set amount of commands that are developed by the same company. It would be close to impossible to achieve the same level of standardisation for a general operating system, as we don’t know the entire configuration of the system and there are multiple incompatible flag schemes. (As styles go, things like dd and ffmpeg throw a wrench in the works with their non-standard flags)

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
    0·
    4 days ago

    I usually use --help as it also gives descriptions for the command, though some programs may only accept -h or no argument to show the help menu.

  • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    Whenever someone says they don’t really like terminal because they don’t like to type or remember commands. This is what I think “they didn’t use auto complete”.

    Auto complete works for file names and paths by default, but the development can write it to only complete certain extensions. Like auto complete for image program only completes image files. Then you have completion for commands, subcommands and flags.

    Auto complete is done through calling a bash script with currently typed line, and the bash script can call other commands. So developer can write a really complicated auto complete and make it available as a binary if they want, and just use that in bash. Or you can use many tools that will generate auto complete script for you based on your commandline args.

    If you write your own scripts/cli binaries I recommend learning how to write auto complete for it. Makes it incredibly easy to use the tools.

    • alias_qr_rainmaker@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      4 days ago

      i was in the dark for so long because i thought tab autocompletions only worked with file paths. i can’t believe that whole time i didn’t even accidentally hit tab once on a command

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 days ago

        I guess it can go unnoticed, I use Arch so maybe that’s why I got more involved. I remember searching why auto completion didn’t work, then finding out I need to install bash-completions package. After knowing that it makes one curious about how it works. Then the next stage is writing it for my own programs because it obviously won’t come with bash-completions package.

        I once wrote a shell (terminal) to watch anime, and I wrote auto completion for different commands on it, it was really nice to just type play then prefix and then tab for auto completion on anime names, and even for episodes I wrote auto completion give me last episode I watched + 1.

  • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    Y’all need to install Arch, you learn all the basics pretty much instantly… That or drown when you can’t install the boot loader.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
    0·
    4 days ago

    For a moment I thought that ‘commandName -’ was some PowerShell stuff.

      • pedz@lemmy.ca
        0·
        4 days ago

        It can’t hurt to know this but to me PS is not intuitive, looks like SomeLongString-ActingLikeA-Command, and I avoid it as much as using Windows in the first place, unless absolutely necessary.

      • ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 days ago

        A TLDR alternative to man pages
        While a man page is for every possible flag available for a command,
        A tldr is for the most common tasks a command can do.

        tldr fc

        fc

  Open the most recent command for editing and then run it.
  More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#index-fc.

  - Open the last command in the default system editor and run it after editing:
    fc

  - Specify an editor to open with:
    fc -e 'emacs'

  - List recent commands from history:
    fc -l

  - List recent commands in reverse order:
    fc -l -r

  - Edit and run a command from history:
    fc number

  - Edit commands in a given interval and run them:
    fc '416' '420'

  - Display help:
    fc --help
  • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    It really depends on þe shell, þe d distribution’s default configuration, and þe commands. Shells will often load a config from /etc/profile.d or someplace like þat; if þe distro doesn’t enable features like autocomplete or history, and you haven’t enabled it in $HOME, you won’t get it. Also, commands need to provide autocomplete hints for the shell; it’s not automatic.

    • alias_qr_rainmaker@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      4 days ago

      Ég þekki ekki efri stigin í spákonunni minni. Ég held mig bara við heimaskrána. Pabbi minn segir mér að efri stigin séu land hinna ódauðu.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    These auto-completions are dependent on having the corresponding completions information installed and enabled. Which it is with most modern distros, but more bare-bones setups won’t have it.