I have a computer and 3 devices I wanted to transfer files between but every available solution was either too awkward which made things annoying, or too bulky with more than what I needed.

I ended up writing a long script (around 1000 lines but I’m generous with spacing so I can read my own code easily) using rsync to deal with transferring files and whole directories with a single command. I can even chain together multiple rsync commands back to back so that I can quickly transfer multiple files or directories in one command. Instead of trying to refer to a wall of text full of rsync commands, I can make something like this:

alias rtPHONEmedia="doas rtransfer /home/dell-pc/.sync/phone/.sync-phone_02_playlists /home/dell-pc/.sync/phone/.sync-phone_03_arbeit /home/dell-pc/.sync/phone/.sync-phone_04_albums /home/dell-pc/.sync/phone/.sync-phone_05_soulseek /home/dell-pc/.sync/phone/.sync-phone_06_youtube"

This will copy everything from a specific folders on my phone, and store them neatly organized into my storage partition on my computer SSD. This also includes all the necessary information including SSH username, address and ID keys.

I can then run alias rtARCHIVEfull="doas rtransfer /home/dell-pc/.sync/computer/.sync-computer_01_archive-full" to quickly copy that storage partition on my computer to my external backup SSD.

I use it so often. It’s especially nice because I can work on a file on my computer and quickly update the file to the remote address location, putting it directly where I need it to be immediately.

mkcd

mkdir and cd into it.

Extremely simple, but I still do not get why this is not implemented by default. alias open='xdg-open'

This is dumb lol but

update = “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade”

Exchange apt for whatever package manager you use, optionally add “&& flatpak upgrade”. If you really want to live on the edge throw a -y in there as well

It already comes with many distros and I can’t live without ll="ls -la"

OP, if you want to watch the video once then scrap it, why not just mpv "$(wl-paste)"

alias zipcat='gunzip -c'
alias untar='tar -xzvf'
alias ping='ping -c3'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'

alias ser=‘pacman -Ss’
alias ins=‘sudo pacman -S’
alias rem=‘sudo pacman -Rncs’
alias upd=‘sudo pacman -Syu’

alias q=‘quit’
alias cl=‘clear’

alias p=‘systemctl poweroff’
alias r=‘systemctl reboot’

I am using Music Player Daemon, and I use the following script to turn gPodder into a client. My music is in ~/Music and I put the podcasts in ~/Music/Podcasts. The script works for both streaming or downloaded podcasts.

[~]$ cat bin/mpcut.sh
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$(echo "$1" | cut -b-4)" = "http" ]; then
    /usr/bin/mpc pause
    /usr/bin/mpc insert "$1"
    /usr/bin/mpc toggle
    /usr/bin/notify-send -i gpodder "$1 inserted to next spot in playlist."
else
    /usr/bin/mpc pause
    /usr/bin/mpc add "Podcasts/$(echo "$1" | cut -d"/" -f6-)"
    /usr/bin/mpc toggle
    /usr/bin/notify-send -i gpodder "$(echo "$1" | cut -d"/" -f7-)" "added to end of playlist."
fi

Audio Player in gPodder preferences is set to this: /home/christopher/bin/mpcut.sh %F

I have an application shortcut Super-G set to this in xfce4-keyboard-settings: env GTK_THEME=Adwaita-dark GPODDER_HOME=/home/christopher/.config/gPodder/ GPODDER_DOWNLOAD_DIR=/home/christopher/Music/Podcasts/ /usr/bin/gpodder

or you could use an alias: alias gpodder='GTK_THEME=Adwaita-dark GPODDER_HOME=/home/christopher/.config/gPodder/ GPODDER_DOWNLOAD_DIR=/home/christopher/Music/Podcasts/ /usr/bin/gpodder --verbose'

Wouldn’t say I use it often, but this thing resolves a domain name to an IP address:

function resolve() {
  case $1 in
    -4)
      getent ahostsv4 $2 | grep STREAM | head -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 1
      ;;
    -6)
      getent ahostsv6 $2 | grep STREAM | head -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 1
      ;;
    -p)
      getent hosts $2 | head -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 1
      ;;
    *)
      getent ahosts $1 | grep STREAM | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort -u      
      ;;
  esac
}

All my aliases are just default arguments for programs or shorthands for my other scripts, most of which are specific for my setup.

This is a very good argument for ffmpeg and ffprobe, by the way:

alias ffmpeg="ffmpeg -hide_banner"
alias ffprobe="ffprobe -hide_banner"

It’s not terribly exciting but I find myself using this a lot:

#!/bin/sh

echo "$*" | sed -e "s/x/*/g" | bc -l

Just a little shorthand for bc that allows me to write “x” instead of “*” to avoid shell expansion nonsense. I put it in ~/.local/bin/= so I can e.g. just write = 17+4x5. Combined with a Quake-style terminal this is much faster than launching a calculator app. It’s a script instead of an alias so it works regardless of the shell I’m currently using.

The call to bc -l could be replaced with one to qalc -t if you know qalc to be present on the system .

in my .gitconfig i have

[alias]
	glg = log --oneline --decorate --all --graph

This allows me to get a quick overview over all branches with pushes that are recent enough for most cases.

Here’s one used daily:

connect ‘192.168.15.20:23 /nossh /T=1’
timeout=30
wait ‘username:’
sendln ‘admin’
wait ‘password:’
sendln ‘hunter2’
wait ‘DSPXmini>’
sendln ‘set dspx.enum.0 digital_audio’
wait ‘digital_audio’
if result=0 goto Error
if result=1 goto Success

:Error
messagebox ‘Something went wrong. Please call Xxxxx on xxxxxxxxxx for help.’ ‘Bugger.’
goto End

:Success
messagebox ‘Done :-) Studio B is now ISOLATED from the transmitter. You can now play around in Studio B without affecting what is going to air.’ ‘Studio B Isolated.’
messagebox ‘Please keep your speaker volume low if someone is broacasting from Studio A at the moment. The walls are thin.’ ‘Thin Wall Reminder…’

:End
disconnect 0

https://gkak.la/shell-aliases

Not an alias, but expanding -h to --help has been very useful in cases where the program just prints “see --help for options” when you just use -h

I use glola from oh-my-zsh every day to see an overview of my projects

Ans ns/nss is very convenient to run one-off commands with software I don’t already have installed!

Oh and cdt = cd $(mktemp -d) is nice to have when you just need a temporary clean directory to do something quick

#!/bin/bash # Recursively rename everything in the current directory as necessary # to make it match the case of filenames in Skyrim’s “Data” directory,

from=`pwd -P`
to="${HOME}/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/common/Skyrim_1.5.97/Data"
tmp="/tmp/skydata_index"
filez="/tmp/skydata_from"

IFS='
'

match_case() {
    cd "$2"
    find . | grep -v '^[.]$' > "$tmp"
    cd "$1"
    find . -maxdepth 1 | grep -v '^[.]$' > "$filez"
    for j in `cat $filez`; do
        if ( grep -i "^${j}$" $tmp ); then
            name=`grep -i "^${j}$" $tmp | head -1`
            if [ "${name}xx" != "${j}xx" ] ; then
                mv "$j" "$name"
            fi
        fi
    done

    # going recursiv
    find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -v '^[.]$' > "$filez"
    for j in `cat $filez`; do
        if ( test -d "${2}/${j}" ) ; then
            match_case "${1}/${j}" "${2}/${j}"
        fi
    done
}
match_case $from $to
rm $tmp $filez