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Small programming tricks

681 points · 294 comments · signa11

  1. phforms · · focus · HN ↗
    The thing with a lot of these tricks is that you have to get into the habit of using them. I knew `Ctrl+r` for history since I learned about the command line. I even have a nice shell integration with fzf. But I still used the up/down arrow keys for years or scrolled up when I was looking for a previous command, because I never remembered the shortcut and just took the path of least resistance to find something.

    Usually what I do is writing these tricks down to a document that is easily accessible at a place where I know that I will look for when failing to remember them. I have a directory of docs where I write stuff like this down by language/tool/etc., so I can quickly look it up without having to search the internet. But I also have to actively remind myself that these things exist whenever I have a problem, stop me from just doing the inefficient thing.

    1. diath · · focus · HN ↗
      > But I still used the up/down arrow keys for years or scrolled up when I was looking for a previous command

      It's not even that bad of a habit with zsh either where it will only scroll through history matching a substring in your history, for instance if I type "rg -i" and then start pressing up arrow, it will only cycle through history entries starting with "rg -i".

      1. harikb · · focus · HN ↗
        Clearly I am missing some setting. On zsh on macOS and I tried what you just said and it doesn't work like this
        1. chrisweekly · · focus · HN ↗
          FWIW I'm also on macos 15.7.9, zsh 5.9, oh-my-zsh - and I do get this behavior (TIL).

          type eg "rg" then up or down arrow, and the history shown is filtered by that rg prefix.

          1. saghm · · focus · HN ↗
            Isn't oh-my-zsh one of those batteries-included distributions? It sounds like that's just one of the configurations that it provides.
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