Ctrl-r = reverse history search. Type a partial command after Ctrl-r and it'll find the most recent executed command with that substring in it.

Press Ctrl-r again, jump to the next oldest command containing your substring. Did you accidentally press too many Ctrl-r? Press backspace to move forward in history.

find . -name "*.png" -print0 | xargs -0 -P8 pngquant --ext .png --force 256 #optimizepng

(if you’re using zsh, you have to enable INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS option first; just run set -k)

Adding a comment there is a neat trick. It also works with bang searches (!?), almost like creating a temporary ad-hoc alias:

    find . -name "*.png" -print0 | xargs -0 -P8 pngquant --ext .png --force 256 #optimizepng
    ... many other commands, time passes ...
    !?optimizepng

If earlier I had a long command like `mvn clean test && mvn deploy -P release`, I can just type `mvn v` and press up on the arrows. zsh will present only history entries that start with what I've typed. Insanely useful!

## arrow up

"\e[A":history-search-backward

## arrow down

"\e[B":history-search-forward

(in .inputrc)

Backspace normally just deletes the last character in your incremental search string.

And be sure that C-s / C-q aren't set up for terminal flow control with something like:

    stty start undef stop undef

    [alias]
    br = branch
    co = checkout
    ci = commit -v
    sci = svn dcommit --interactive
    cp = cherry-pick
    l = log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
    l3 = log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit -n3
    lm = log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit master..
    rc = rebase --continue
    st = status -sb
    squash = !git rebase -i --autosquash $(git merge-base master HEAD)

    if [ -f ~/.functions ]; then . ~/.functions; fi

A tweak to the "editbash" suggested alias will make it so that you don't have to reopen your terminal. My equivalent alias is "vif", for "vi .functions":

    alias vif='vi ~/.functions; . ~/.functions'

Lastly: brevity is king. I love 'alias psgrep="ps aux | grep"', since I use it several times a day, but to "level up your shell game", keep it short. My alias for this command is "psg". The other alias that I use all the time is "d" -- "alias d='ls -lFh --color --group-directories -v'".

Write a script called git-mycommand, and you can invoke it with 'git mycommand'. Tab completion works too, at least for bash + bash_completion.

    if [ -d $HOME/bin ]
    then
        PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
    fi

'ps aux | grep' works everywhere

Tilde-hyphen expands to the previous directory you were in, and of course "cd -" returns you to your previous directory, so I put them together all the time.

Here's an example workflow (with a fake PS1):

  mac:/Users/me/Projects/my_new_app$ cd ~/.pow

  mac:/Users/me/.pow$ ln -s ~- .

  mac:/Users/me/.pow$ cd -

  mac:/Users/me/Projects/my_new_app$

<disclaimer>

That's bit of a contrived example above. Here's a more realistic way to do a symlink for pow:

  mac:/Users/me/Projects/my_new_app$ ln -s `pwd` ~/.pow/

    ln -s $PWD ~/.pow

What do you mean you've never used Emacs? mumble whippersnappers mumble

EDIT: In bash, that is. It's `bindkey -v` in zsh.

set editing-mode vi

Now any executable that uses readline will have vi editing commands on its command line. mysql, psql, etc.

Do as much of your command line editing configuration in .inputrc as possible, and you'll have it everywhere.

EDIT: man readline

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/l-keyc/...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5M47jV...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BzFiI_7...

(pt2/pt3 borked on IBMs site)

    $ aaa ^U
    # now "aaa" is the only thing in the kill ring
    $ bbb ^U
    # now kill ring is ["aaa", "bbb"]
    $ ccc ^U
    # now kill ring is ["aaa", "bbb", "ccc"]
    $ ^Y
    $ ccc
    # alt+y cycles through the kill ring
    $ bbb Alt+Y
    $ aaa Alt+Y
    $ ccc Alt+Y
    $ bbb

Alternatively, you can just do '. ~/.bash_profile' or 'source ~./bash_profile'.

  alias refresh-bash="source ~/.bash_profile"

http://irreal.org/blog/?p=2063

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html

Also cf.:

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/system-bindings.html

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/selectors.html

https://github.com/jrus/cocoa-text-system/tree/master/KeyBin...

https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Aliases

...after aliasing git to 'g' in your shell config, of course :)

    alias g='git'

ctrl + z

then, to send it to the background:

bg

and, to get it back from the background:

fg

Also, I really like to use "for", like:

// get the size of each file or directory in the current directory

for i in `ls -1`; do du -hs $i; done;

instead of "ls -1" you could use any other command that returns a list

The "du -hs ." will only return the size of the current directory, but that was also an example. You could use any other command that you wanted to perform over each item in the list returned by the first command.

Not sure if this is clear enough, please let me know.

    "\C-gs": "git status -sb "

Alternatively, you could change your workspace bindings to Control+[some other modifier].

> ctrl + left arrow Moves the cursor to the left by one word > ctrl + right arrow Moves the cursor to the right by one word

Alt + b and Alt + f are also aliases for the same action.

I also enjoyed the format of the article. A whole dev team each contributing their own piece to a blog post provides a lot of different voices and styles in a concise way.

to clear the screen, instead of typing "clear" is pretty useful too.