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Working with Linux ??? Quick Hacks for the Command Line
Working with Linux ??? Quick Hacks for the Command Line

Working with Linux ??? Quick Hacks for the Command Line: Command line power like you've never seen

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Working with Linux ??? Quick Hacks for the Command Line

Chapter 2. Productive Shells – Reinvent the way you work

In this chapter, we will start off with a short introduction to Vim and look at the most basic commands to help you get started with basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations. We will then upgrade the shell interpreter to zsh and also give it superpowers with the awesome oh-my-zsh framework. We will look at some basic regular expressions such as searching some text using grep. Then, we will unleash the power of Unix pipes and run embedded commands using subshells. The later part of the chapter will help us understand how we can boost productivity and automate a lot of our day-to-day work by showing some of the more advanced shell scripting techniques.

In this chapter, we will cover the following:

  • Working with Vim
  • Managing zsh using the oh-my-zsh framework
  • Writing and running super powerful one line commands using pipes and subshells
  • Exploring the shell scripting libraries

We will focus on editing files. For...

Oh-my-zsh – your terminal never felt this good before!

Bash is probably the most commonly used shell. It has lots of features and powerful scripting capabilities, but when it comes to user interaction, zsh is better. Most of its power comes from the awesome framework oh-my-zsh. In this section, we will be installing zsh.

Let's get started with the oh-my-zsh framework and we will be looking at some basic configuration options:

  • Open the terminator and type sudo apt install zsh to install zsh, as shown in the following image:
    Oh-my-zsh – your terminal never felt this good before!

After installing it, go to this link, https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh, and follow the instructions for installing the oh-my-zsh framework. The installation process is a one-line command with curl or wget. Let's install it using both the command one by one:

Via curl:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Via wget:

sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell...

Basic regular expressions

You have a problem and you want to solve it with regular expressions? Now you have two problems! This is just one of the many regular expression jokes on the Internet.

In this section, you will learn how regular expressions work, as we will be using them in the upcoming chapters. We have prepared a file for our playground and if you want to try the grep commands on your own, you can take it from the GitHub repository.

Let's start by opening our text file so we can see its contents, and then splitting the screen so we can see both the file and the command side by side.

First of all, the simplest and probably the most common regular expression is to find a single word.

For this we will use the grep "joe" file.txt command:

Basic regular expressions

joe is the string we are searching for and file.txt is the file where we perform the search. You can see that grep printed the line that contained our string and the word is highlighted with another color. This will only match the exact...

Pipes and subshells – your shell's salt and pepper

In this section, we will be looking at ways to improve your productivity using your shell. The Linux command line is great because it has a variety of tools we can use. What makes it even greater is the fact that we can chain these tools together to form greater, more powerful tools that will make us even more productive. We will not go into basic shell commands; instead we will be looking at some cool pipe and subshell combinations that can make our lives easier.

Let's start with a basic pipe; in this example, we are counting the length of the current path using the following command:

pwd | wc -c
Pipes and subshells – your shell's salt and pepper

pwd, as you probably know, stands for print working directory. The | is the pipe symbol, and what it does is send the output of the command on the left to the command on the right. In our case, pwd is sending its output to wc -c, which counts the number of characters. The coolest thing about pipes is that you can create a chain...

Shell scripting for fun and profit

Pipes and subshells are one way of expanding the capabilities of our shell. The ultimate way is by writing shell scripts. These scenarios must be taken into consideration when dealing with complex tasks that can't be automated with a one-line command.

The good news is that almost all the tasks can be automated with the use of shell scripts. We won't go over an introduction to shell scripts. Instead, we will be looking at some more advanced use cases for writing them.

Let's start our journey into shell scripting! First thing, let's open a file called script.sh and split the screen so that we can test while writing. Every shell should start with #!, followed by the interpreter it uses. This line is called a shebang. We will be using bash as our default interpreter.

It's a good idea to use bash, because it's a common interpreter that comes with most Linux distributions and also OS X:

#!/bin/bash

Let's start with a simple use...

Shell scripting libraries

To really take advantage of automating tasks using shell scripts, it's important to organize all common tasks into reusable commands and have them available in the path. To do this, it's a good idea to create a bin folder inside the home directory for the scripts, and a bin/lib directory for storing common pieces of code. When working with lots of shell scripts, it's important to reuse large pieces of functionality. This can be achieved by writing library functions for your shell scripts, functions that you can call from multiple places.

Here we will create a library script called util.sh, which will be sourced in other scripts. By sourcing the script, we get access to functions and variables from inside the library script.

We will start by adding the print_ip function from a previous script.

Now we will add another function called getarg, which will be used by other scripts for reading command line arguments and values. We will simply paste it from...

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Key benefits

  • Improve your terminal and command-line productivity by using powerful tools
  • Sharpen your existing command-line skills and achieve complex tasks faster
  • Save time and money by creating customized commands that automate day-to-day tasks

Description

Websites, online services, databases, and pretty much every other computer that offers public services runs on Linux. From small servers to clusters, Linux is anywhere and everywhere. With such a broad usage, the demand for Linux specialists is ever growing. For the engineers out there, this means being able to develop, interconnect, and maintain Linux environments. This book will help you increase your terminal productivity by using Terminator, Guake and other tools. It will start by installing Ubuntu and will explore tools and techniques that will help you to achieve more work with less effort. Next, it will then focus on Terminator, the ultimate terminal, and vim, one of the most intelligent console editors. Futhermore, the readers will see how they can increase their command line productivity by using sed, find, tmux, network, autoenv. The readers will also see how they can edit files without leaving the terminal and use the screen space efficiently and copy-paste like a pro. Towards the end, we focus on network settings, Git hacks, and creating portable environments for development and production using Docker. Through this book, you will improve your terminal productivity by seeing how to use different tools.

Who is this book for?

This book is for system administrators and developers who know the basics of Linux and want to brush up and sharpen their skills. Prior experience with Linux shell is required.

What you will learn

  • Optimize the power of Guake by integrating it with ClipIt
  • Deep dive into the workings of the console editor—Vim
  • Explore the advanced concepts and best practices of shell scripting
  • Edit large amounts of data quickly using Sed
  • Use pipes and subshells to create customized commands
  • Get to know how you can speed up the software development and make the terminal a handy companion
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Length: 222 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781787129184
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Tools :

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Table of Contents

7 Chapters
1. Introduction Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Productive Shells – Reinvent the way you work Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Vim kung fu Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. CLI – The Hidden Recipe Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Developers' Treasure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Terminal Art Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

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Eric Y. Nie Mar 26, 2018
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