Shit is usually a pain in the ass. The challenge is divining how much of a pain in the ass something has to be that someone else might have made a solution for it.

I didn't know you could ctrl+shift+c to copy in the terminal until a month ago when my linux n00b wife said "there has to be a better way to do this. I've been right clicking to copy for 10 years.

Congratulations! I remember where I was when I first learned it (in a noisy server room at the back of a machine shop).

Now pair it with FZF for fuzzy finding -- it's surprisingly easy to set up, just following any guide. It's insanely useful. I find myself even doing things like typing:

$ xinput --disable $(xinput --list | grep -i touchpad | grep 'id=[0-9]\+' -o | cut -d= -f2)  # Disable synaptic touchpad trackpad pointer

commands with these like comments on the ends as sort of "tags" so I can ctrl+r search for them later. Yes, I know I could just use a named function, but this is like the step just before that--before I know if I'll be issuing the same command all the time, or just for the next couple weeks. (This one was from when I was resting my notebook on my laptop.)

As usual, that's documented (we can RTFM).

• Bash command line editing covers searching.
• Readline library command line editing covers searching.

Before trying ctrl-s, you may want to disable software flow control: run stty -ixon & add it to your initialization files. Otherwise, you'll pause terminal output. ctrl-q resumes terminal output.

stty reveals terminal special characters

$ stty -a
⁝
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>; eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; discard = ^O; …
⁝

These special characters/keys often perform special functions. To illustrate

• ctrl-d on empty input typically exits/logs out of interactive terminal applications (including shells)
• ctrl-u discards input (useful for inputs like password prompts that don't echo input back)
• ctrl-v inputs next character literally (such as tab)

Just checking, because I learnt to type before I worked this out, and because surely someone reading doesn't know: press tab. Bash will fill in file names from your current directory.

E.g. say you have files fred1file, fred2file, jim.

Type f then press tab, it will fill to "fred". Then press 2 and press tab again and it will fill the full "fred2file".

Have a play, it works in heaps of situations.

Use mcfly and it will be even better.

Wait till you learn about !?.

^r is superior, though.

Hey! I've seen you before! You're the unhinged jackass noticer!

...i looked in your comment history for too long to figure out why though. https://lemmy.world/comment/18001123

Even quicker with fish: Write the first few letters then it auto-suggests the last-run command matching that prefix (and then you can still arrow up to cycle through all matches).

(There is also a zsh plugin for that, called zsh-autosuggestions.)

I main ZSH and I've been CTRL+R'ing for years damn here I am a fool

Fish shell has this feature too. Love it.

It was publicized as part of readline, I think.

...in like 1989.

This changed my life when I discovered it. Also using ag as alternative to ack.

FZF Vim plugin is also gold!

Check out the fzf shell bindings. Reverse history search with fuzzy matching is one of the features.

For me, it looks normal (about 8 frames a second, probably).

Normal for me. Thanks for pointing out it was a gif. I never realize they're gifs because I have to "open in external" for them to actually move.

It works fine for me if I click on it but the embedded one is stuttering.

If you have a fzf or other plugin installed, great. the vanilla Ctrl R is kinda mid in most shells IMO

with grep I see all the alternatives, Ctl+R just shows me one

Why not just use an alias?

Brilliant

Some would call the former command cat abuse.

In short, unless you want the contents of a file printed to stdout (or multiple files concatenated), the command can probably be written without cat, instead using the filename as an argument (grep pattern file) or IO redirection (cmd < file).

Stylistics and readability are another thing though.