Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

Your example got me thinking about the difference between how the windows shell and Unix shell is designed. Seems like the windows shell knows about extensions, whereas the Unix shell does not

That’s an interesting feature for a shell to have. Thanks!

Firstly, Linux seems to have no concept of "associated program", so you can never "just" call .py file, and let the shell to know to use python to execute it. Sure, you can chmod +x to the script, but then you have to add a shebang line directly to the script itself, which I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-coded (what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp`?).

Might be you could use binfmt_misc for that.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/binfmt-mi...

> then you have to add a shebang line directly to the script itself, which I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-coded (what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp`?)

> But I really, really just want to run `hello` to call a `hello.py` script that is in my $PATH.

On Linux I'd say the shebang is still the right tool for this. If you want a lightweight approach, just have a `my_python` symlink in your path, then your shebang can be `/usr/bin/env my_python` (or heck just `/foo/bar/baz/my_python`, /usr/bin/env is already an abstraction).

If you want a more principled approach, look at the `update-alternatives` tool, which provides this sort of abstraction in a more general way: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-set-default-programs-using-up...

but then you have to add a shebang line directly to the script itself, which I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-coded

It won’t directly help reach your goal, but it is semi hard-coded. The ‘correct’ (but see https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/29620 for some caveats) way to write a shebang line is

  #!/usr/bin/env python

what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp`?).

You could create a symlink called python to /usr/bin/nohtyp on your system in a directory that’s searched before /usr/bin (e.g. by adding ~/myCommandPreferences to the front of your PATH)

what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp

you're thinking too much, people have had that shebang for 20 years without any problems

But I really, really just want to run `hello` to call a `hello.py` script that is in my $PATH.

I don't really understand why you're so adamant about this, either make a python "hello" script with a shebang or just tab complete hell<tab> which you should do with most commands anyway so the .py doesn't matter

another option would be to alias but you'd have to do that manually for every frequent script you need

Linux can do this. There are probably more ways, but this is off the top of my head.

Use an alias which you set up in your initialization scripts. You alias "hello" to "python3 /yada/yada/hello.py" which is essentially what Windows is doing for you behind the scenes.

Others have already mentioned how to fix your problem, but I just want to mention one thing about why:

On Linux (really, all platforms other than Windows), file extensions are much less of a thing; executables of any kind have no extension just the +x flag (among other things, this means you can rewrite them in another language without breaking anything).

The .py extension is only relevant for modules meant to be imported; for scripts being run, if you really need to know, you are supposed to look at the shebang (usually #!/usr/bin/env python for externally-distributed scripts; this gets overwritten to #!/usr/bin/python or whatever for scripts packaged by the distro itself).

Note also that, while shebangs don't support multiple arguments, the GNU version of `env` supports a `-S` argument that can emulate them (the argument length problem remains though).

Firstly, Linux seems to have no concept of "associated program", so you can never "just" call .py file, and let the shell to know to use python to execute it.

There is, but not in the shell syntax. It's an application concern normally delegated to the desktop/GUI.

For shell scripts, the executable is usually declared in the script itself, by adding a Shebang and making the file executable. Think of the Shebang like a file extension of sorts.

If

  chmod +x ./malware.py
  ./malware.py

That being said, as long as an interpreter can execute the scripts as regular argument, you should be able to get this behavior also for xdg-open:

  xdg-open malware.py

This should be equivalent to double-clicking file in the default file manager, IIRC (am on Mac now).

I had an alias "xop <file>" when using Linux as my primary desktop OS.

But I only used this for data files (images, documents etc) where the default already works.

Wouldn't recommend setting an interpreter as default for executable scripts.

You might want to not execute scripts by default, instead opening them in an editor for example.

xdg-open is a Gnome thing I think, but that doesn't mean it's unavailable for other desktops. I know it from Xubuntu (so Xfce).

So I'd really advise against that, But if you want to execute all python files by default in any GUI context, too you could set this kind of default there

'man xdg-open' might help, or maybe you could even select a specific Python executable as the default for .py files after double-clicking in the File Manager.

Again, bad advice

You could have a shim script with the shebang that only exists to call the "real" script using Python.

/usr/bin/hello:

  #!/usr/bin/bash
  python3 /usr/bin/hello.py

  print("Hello, world!")

  $ chmod +x /usr/bin/hello
  $ hello
  Hello, World!

Simply remove the .py from the filename. It's perfectly acceptable to call it "hello".

I can't think of a downside to the shebang. If you really wanted to run the script with a different interpreter, just specify it. "nohtyp hello" or whatever.

If that still bothers you too much, you could define an alias in your shell startup. For example, in bash, you might do:

alias hello="python3 /path/to/hello.py"

If you were so inspired, you could even write a short script to automatically create such aliases for the contents of a directory you specify.

The normal way here is to name your script simply `hello`, start it with a shebang reading `#!/usr/bin/env python3`, and mark it executable. This of course makes running it as `hello` work (if you put it in PATH), but also:

- The shebang is only specially interpreted by the Linux loader, i.e. when executing the file directly.

- You can still run it with any other interpreter in the standard way: `nohtyp ~/bin/hello`. Python comments start with `#`, so the shebang does nothing with programs expecting Python code.

- This situation (a script without an extension) is common on Linux, so Linux-aware editors understand the shebang to indicate a file type. At least, vim understands this and automatically detects a python file type without the .py extension.

I get your wish of Windows-like behaviour, and even if you might be able to conspire to have Linux behave the way you want, it's certainly not how people expect it to work, so prefer the above scheme for any software you send to others. :)

I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-code

I used to think this as well, but I've since come around to the opposite view. Having it as a "requirement" for what's likely the most popular cli execution strategy enforces a (somewhat disorganised but still useful) defacto standard across all scripts. I can open up any repo/gist/pastebin in the world & chances are if it's intended to be run, it'll contain this handy little statement of intent on the first line. I might not actually run (env-dependent) but I'm sure I can make it.

On the env-sensitivity though, if e.g. you're running nohtyp, as another commenter mentioned, /usr/bin/env has that covered.

you have to add a shebang line directly to the script itself, which I always feel uncomfortable since it's hard-coded (what if in future I don't want to execute my .py script with `/usr/bin/python` but `/usr/bin/nohtyp`?).

I believe the elegant solution to this is update-alternatives, which lets you tell the system which actual program to call. Maybe look into update-alternatives, I haven't looked into this much but it seems like it might interest you particularly. That's the closest equivalent to file association for the UNIX shell I would guess.

You could also have a specific folder that you control in your PATH that symlinks to the Python you want to use.

This handles the default, but you can still call your script with the program you want if you ever wish to bypass that.

You can utilize `command_not_found_handle()` for the extension-less behavior.

You can use the /usr/bin/env python shebang line to work across python location

I keep all my scripts in ~/git/$Project and symlink them into ~/bin and I've added ~/bin to the end of my path.

can't you use a shebang in Linux with .py files? And, as for removing .py, just remove the extension and make it executable or use a symlink

from a google search, https://stackoverflow.com/a/19305076

I'm not at the computer now to test though

You can run /usr/bin/nohtyp hello.py even on a script with a shebang specifying a different executable.

To remove the .py just rename the file to “hello”, or keep “hello.py” and create a symlink or a shell alias called “hello” that points to it.

Linux has a feature called 'binfmt_misc' which allows you to associate an interpreter to run when a file of any arbitrary format is invoked like an executable. You have to tell the kernel which extension or format is associated with which interpreter, but this is easily done in a startup script.

You still have to say '.py' at the end, though.

You don't need the file to be named "hello.py". You can name it just "hello", with the right shebang it will work fine.

But then you start using some tool that expects $0 in the system path and breaks causing frustration and debugging.

Pick your poison

ls ~/bin is wayyyyy slower to type than ,<tab>

I just… remember the names I give things? Why is this considered a “hack” of some kind?

One of the benefits is using fzf autocomplete. E.g. in fish type the first char of the command and Tab to launch fzf. Then `,`+Tab is a quick way to filter these custom commands. Versus `ls ~/bin` would be a lot of characters for something I do a lot, or maybe I'd be going `ls`+UpArrow+UpArrow+UpArrow to autocomplete that first.

Moin, To manage my dotfiles I use git and an alias. See https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles

My main system is windows, so it's c:/CmdTools repo in PATH. I tried to learn `stow`-likes, but it's not worth it. I just clone/pull/push it in that fixed location. Mostly cmdbash scripts.

More complex (multi-file) tools are usually separate ts or python projects. Node has {npm,yarn} link, which puts a starter .cmd somewhere in PATH, out of box. Python scripts I usually run through .cmd "alias" files in c:/CmdTools, there's no `pip link` afaik.

I always have MSYS2 installed and here's my cmdbash prolog:

  some.cmd:

    :<<BATCH
      @xbash %~dpf0 %*
      @exit /b
    BATCH

    for i in {1..5}; do
      echo "Hello from bash!"
    done

This setup carried me for years and turns out to be a very reasonable windows/unix integration. I like unix architecture, but can't stand linux desktop. This year I've got a project related to linux desktop, and I'm literally become so stressed using it sometimes that I have to take a break or vent loudly.

I got this from an old HN comment I can't find anymore. I have this in my .bashrc:

  alias dotfiles='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME'

  git clone --bare gitolite3@example.com:dotfiles $HOME/.dotfiles
  git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME config status.showUntrackedFiles no
  git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME reset --hard

My ~/bin directory is not directly version controlled. It primarily consists of symlinks, often stripping file extensions from shell scripts (e.g., ~/bin/foobar links to ~/src/foobar.sh) I have just enough python scripts and go binaries to make me think it's worth separating src and bin.

~/src is a git repo. One script evolved into its own project and became a submodule within ~/src.

For configuration files like ~/.foobar_rc and directories such as ~/.vim/, they again are not directly version controlled but are symlinked into ~/etc which is. I don't see any reason that ~/.foobar_rc couldn't be a hardlink, but it's not in my setup.

I used to maintain a single repository at ~ that included ~/src and ~/etc as submodules, with a build script for setting up links. Always being within a git repository became cumbersome, so I moved the build tools into their respective directories (~/src and ~/etc) and now clone and build each repository manually.

Lastly, since private repos aren't (weren't?) free, those submodule repos are really just branches of the same repo that share no common ancestors.

I use a git repository `dotfiles` containing several configs in `dotfiles/etc/`.

Since I use `zsh`, I usually only symlink the `dotfiles/etc/zsh/.zshrc` to `$HOME/.zshrc`, while the `.zshrc` loads environment variables settings all required paths for my tools, e.g.:

  export PATH="$HOME/bin:$HOME/dotfiles/scripts:$PATH"
  export STARSHIP_CONFIG="$HOME/dotfiles/etc/starship/starship.toml"
  export GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL="$HOME/dotfiles/etc/git/.gitconfig"
  export MYVIMRC="$HOME/dotfiles/etc/vim/vimrc"
  export VIMINIT='source $MYVIMRC'
  # ...

I keep everything I care about in a dot-files repo that knows what to install where in different places. I wrote a little tool to make it easier for me to do this: https://github.com/oalders/is

There are tools to manage it for you that I’m sure someone will come along and mention, but I’ve got a repo I check out at `~/.home`, then a shell script they just symlinks everything into place.

So .bashrc is a symlink to ~/.home/.bashrc, ~/.config/nvim to ~/.home/.config/nvim, etc.

It’s simple and only relies on having something sh-compatible available so portable now and in the future.

To manage per-system tweaks, I have places that include an additional file based on hostname. For example my .bashrc has something like:

    if [ -f “$HOME/.bashrc.$HOSTNAME” ]; then
        source “$HOME/.bashrc.$HOSTNAME”
    if

Been working well for me for… a decade now?

I use ansible

I use chezmoi - it handles both elegantly & has no real requirements w.r.t. how you choose to structure your filesystem. It also handles recovery well when you mess things up.

Look into gnu stash

I have a custom tool built up over the years that keeps the history of that stuff in repos, but the actual files in ~/bin are usually hadlinks to the repo files (configurable - can be softlink or copy, too).

Every few weeks or months, I run a command on each system that gathers up any accumulated changes I've made to these files and syncs them to common machine that has all the repos. I merge those changes, then run another command to install the updates on all machines, so everything stays in-sync, over time.

I found that these ~/bin scripts and config files fell into a bit of a "donut hole" of development effort, where it was too much bother to maintain a full repo/build/install setup for every single script independently, but I did want to keep changes in sync and track them over time, rather than just having each system diverge forever.

So, my solution was to bundle lots of scripts together, into just a few repos, and sync/merge/etc them in bulk, to streamline the process.

A downside is lots of my commit notes are just a generic "gathering up latest changes" since I'm slurping up lots of edits to unrelated files at once. Hasn't really been a problem for me, though. I mostly just care about having the history.

My ~/scripts is a git repo

My dotfiles/configs are a mix of the following setup on boot:

- one-way copy of config file from $repo/$path to $path (prevents apps from modifying my curated config or adding noise)

- or make it a symlink (if I want it mutable)

- or make it a bind mount (if a symlink won't work; can be a file or folder)

- or make it a one way copy but add a file watcher to copy changes back to the repo (if none of the above work. Some programs fail if the file they need is a symlink or is bind mounted)

For dotfiles using a one-way copy, whenever I change a setting I want to persist I have to manually copy or edit the original $repo/$path. I can take a diff against the repo for a hint, or use `inotifywait -r -e modify,create,delete,move . ~/.local ~/.config -m` for something new.

Not using hard links since the dotfiles are likely to be on a different filesystem (or dataset) than their target paths.

I have some essential stuff for zsh config in a git repo.

For my most important custom bins, they are written in Rust and published to crates.io so I cargo install them from there. It’s just one crate, with wrappers for the git commands that I use day to day

In addition to this, I have host specific repos with some scripts. These scripts are not in my path but are instead scripts that run on a schedule from cron. These scripts run and log various facts about the machine such as zpool status and list installed packages, and auto-commit and push those to their repo. And the other kind of script I have invokes zfs send and recv to have automatic backups of data that I care about.

In addition to this I have a couple other git repos for stuff that matters to me, which either runs via cron (retrieving data from 3rd parties on a schedule) or manually (processing some data).

For neovim I stopped caring about having a custom RC file at all. I just use vanilla neovim now on my servers. On my laptop I use full blown IDEs from JetBrains for doing work.

I didn't invent this, but I have a headless "config" checkout, and have a git-alias which sets my home-directory as the work-tree:

   git init --bare $HOME/.config/repo
   alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.config/repo --work-tree=$HOME'
   config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Re your second question, here’s how I manage my dotfiles:

https://github.com/andersix/dotfiles

Symbolic links set up with dotbot[1].

Since the link directives are idempotent, you can run it on every login shell if you desire. I ended up setting up a shared jumpbox used by some contractors with it so they could work with our internal tooling without requiring excessive setup, and wrapped it into a shell startup script[2] and found it performant enough that I couldn't tell the difference.

1: https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot

2: https://gist.github.com/RulerOf/f41259f493b965c9354c2564d85b...

Hot take: system commands shouldn't be as accessible as user commands. There should be some sort of namespacing. For example, mkfs should be invoked with `sys::mkfs` or something like that.

The line that separates system and user commands may be defined in different ways, and it may be fuzzy in some places, but if a user accidentally invokes a command that they don't even know why is there, and they didn't explicitly install, then that's clearly a command that shouldn't be directly available in the global namespace.

I tend to make all my git aliases into two-letter combos starting with g. So `gs` is `git status`, for example. Once in a while I actually really need GhostScript though, it’s brilliant for e.g. embedding fonts into PDF files. Usually I then go with `env gs`.

This approach can lead to issues like `apt-get upgrade` launching dwarf fortress:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/938606/dwarf-fortress-starti...

This. 1-3 character names should be reserved for user aliases/functions/scripts and standard utilities.

All my personal commands begin with 'j'. Got real fun when java came around. Using commas is a rather interesting idea.

But at least I did not start them with a 'k' (KDE) :)

Surely ,nds?

Love it!

Brackets have a special meaning in the UNIX shell since the earliest times.

Together with "*" and "?", the brackets "[" and "]" have been used by the UNIX shell since some of its earliest versions (already many years before the Bourne shell) in pattern matching for pathname expansion (globbing).

For example, if you have in a directory 3 files named "file1", "file2" and "file3", then

"ls file?" will output

file1 file2 file3

while "ls file[13]" will output

file1 file3

Brackets are used in shell wildcard ("glob") expressions. For example, if you try to use "[bar]" as a command, the shell will first look for files named "b", "a", and "r" in the current directory, and if it finds any it'll use the first one as the command name and any others as arguments to it.

But as far as I can see, using a close-bracket as the first character in a command is safe, since it cannot be treated as part of such a pattern. Open-bracket (without a matching close-bracket) would work in many shells, but will get you a "bad pattern" error in zsh.

Cunningham's Law in action lol

wrong

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V...

I built my side project in a separate, trendier stack than the one I’m comfortable with at work for this very reason.

Just to see some new perspectives and be conversant in the trends.

Some of the new stack now crosses over to work, and I have a deeper appreciation for some of the older pieces.

Also in "management", also feel like my skills will atrophy if I don't keep up.

What I do is make tools to make my life easier. For example, if there's a web service at work I use for mundane lookups I'll find out if it has an API and write a CLI for it to speed up my daily grind. Once it's tuned to my liking I'll share it with the team. I do struggle to convince others to try it. Not sure why. But I don't really care because I use the tools every day.

I think the hip thing to do is just use your spare time to build stuff, and organically learn from building stuff. Self-sufficiency, creativity and generally being a self-starter is what's hip. More time spent building translates into an incentive to pickup tricks and relying on yourself to find hip solutions to actual problems.

One drawback is that this doesn't have the same tab completion ergonomics, which I have to admit is really nifty.

They do in zsh

Wrappers or replacements? If it’s a wrapper do you remove local bin from path or hard code system path?

what doesn't work about it? i made ",foo.bar"

and i went into PS and typed ,<tab> and it said:

PS V:\> & '.\,foo.bar'

Normally ~/.local/bin/ is only for installed scripts; locally-written ones go in ~/bin/

Use TSV instead.

I like the idea of using periods for collections of commands. I have a todo list hacked together with shell scripts and I've been thinking about how I might want to stay away from collisions. I think I'll use do.thing style commands, so my commands will be:

  do.item  Add an item to the bottom of my todo list  
  do.soon  List the items that I need to do soon  
  do.next  List the next item to work on  
  do.mark  Mark the current item done

I'm a fan of using argc for this <https://github.com/sigoden/argc>. I have my `~/.local/bin/.argc` file, which has a bunch of commands that I wrote. The commands have inline documentation and documented parameters. Quite nice for rarely-used scripts!

Yup. Most of my vim aliases begin with ,

I don't understand why you would shadow the system utilities with your own, yet not want to use identical names, so that you have to keep remembering to use the comma.

If you don't like the system's grep (e.g. Solaris grep or whatever) but prefer your own (e.g. GNU grep), why wouldn't you just want that to be "grep".

Thanks!

, macroexpand:

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31846902 - June 2022 (121 comments)

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22778988 - April 2020 (89 comments)

You can do what you want but it’s not nothing: it costs six keystrokes every time (seven, counting shift for tilde)

I'd never (not so far) encounter a word or text that starts with a comma immediately followed by anything.

Agreed. I prefer using `!bang`s for the same reason for expanding text.