hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4018.txt

Episode: 4018
Title: HPR4018: A comment about other shows and Aliases
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4018/hpr4018.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:39:10

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This is Hacker Public Radio, episode 4,018 for Wednesday, the 27th of December 2023.
Today's show is entitled, A Comment About Other Shows and Aliases.
It is hosted by Ray Toe and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, about the use of the aliases and bash are seen in Linux to better use your comment line.
Hi, this is your host, Ray Toe and this is about HPR 3928 from Scotty.
Scotty's show was aired on August 23rd and it was mostly about the bash and such.
So this is interesting for people who use Linux or want to use Linux.
For others, well, it may be not so interesting.
I love to read about or to go over the aliases list of others and see what they have collected, what they use, how they use it.
So when I heard Scotty's list and I know that he has some good show notes, I was happy to go on this side from HPR and copy these and send it to my inbox.
And after a while, I started to go through and I stopped and now here I am back again.
Enough time to go through it.
What I really liked on Scotty's aliases list is that he, I think I'm not really sure, but I think,
it would be good to write out the whole comment.
So you can re, well, the abbreviation of the comment L like list, for example, is an easy one, but there are many others.
If you just have the abbreviation, it is hard to understand what they do unless you try it or whatever.
So Scotty has written everything out and I looked at mine and I saw, oh, this is really a good idea. I don't have that.
So I started to go through my list and compared sometimes his comments with mine and how he extended it to the whole text and I did so and I took many of him over.
By the way, I will copy in my aliases list as well.
But when I looked at Scotty's list, it was really, or it is really large, at least to me.
So my list at the moment with some title and some lines in between to make it better readable gets to a total of 58 lines.
And that doesn't mean that I have 58 comments. It's just 58 lines.
And well, I cannot remember all of them. I have some of them I really like. I use plus minus on a daily basis.
But then there are others that I tend to forget to be very honest.
And then I look at Scotty's and it is, I don't know, maybe double or almost three times as large as mine.
And I was just wondering, can you remember all the comments he has in there and does he use it so often that he can use it on a daily basis?
Do I miss interpret into something on that one?
All then there is more. There is some stuff about the bash and so on.
Anyway, so I will not go too much into detail, but the listing of directories is the one I use the most.
And my favorite one is just LL like Lima Lima, which does list the directory in the in the way I prefer.
And then it goes really very quick. So you don't have to think about it. This is I used to type in when previously I used to type LS minus LAH.
And I was really fast with it for a long time, but then with the beginning or with the usage of all else I didn't forget about it, but almost.
So it has a pro and a contra. So the pro is it is really very handy. It gives you really very convenient information.
On the other hand, when I set up a new Raspberry Pi or any other computer, I pretty soon have the feeling to copy over my aliases list and get it up and running because otherwise I feel a little bit lost.
Then there are also comments like the one for process listing the PS where I have like, well, my abbreviation is PSA, which stands like for process listing all.
And the abbreviation behind it or the code rather behind it is PS as it usually is. And then it's an alpha uniform X-ray Foxtrot.
And I tried to extend this comment as well instead of just letters.
But looking in the man page, there is no whole word for the A, for example, I suppose the A stands for all, but you don't have it in that way.
So this was quite interesting while going through all that. Then others which is interesting if you are on Ubuntu, for example, is if you remove the squash FS.
And I think the squash FS came in with snaps, not 100% sure.
I think I picked it up in a podcast, in Ubuntu podcast back in the days.
And this one is really handy because this squash FS, there is really a tons of them. And if you just want to do a DF and see what is there, you get overwhelmed by it.
So I've picked a few aliases from my list. I didn't go into all of them because I guess it is more fun if you quickly go on the website from HPR and look through it or copy it over and send it to your email for for later review.
Oh, I didn't mention the one to clear the terminal. Now as I am in KDE, you can clear the terminal by shift control and K like kilo.
But when you are in a gnome, I have a really well, I made abbreviation CLR for clear. And this is a print F backslash 033 see like Charlie.
This is really handy to really clear the terminal, you know that you cannot scroll back to it. I really needed to have that when I was on Ubuntu mate, but on KDE, I no longer needed, however, still there.
Yeah, something else I wanted to mention, if I remember correctly, I copied over something from clatoon long, long time ago, and this is in the bash RC.
I think clatoon is using or he used an extended, he used an extended prompt.
And there was quite a lot of text and he copied it as well into the show notes. And so we had the chance to take it over and play with it.
So one thing, it was about, I think it is called the IP, the prompt in the in the in the bash. And then you can decide what you see there. And usually it begins with some name of your computer, maybe.
And then it has a dollar sign or if you're as rude, then it comes with a, oh gosh, with the other sign, which doesn't come to my mind right now.
And the hashtag, I think. And then when the path you dive into your into your heart is in a deeper and deeper level that the path shown gets longer and longer and you come and this breaks at some point and it is hard to read.
And so clatoon has the, if I remember correctly, as I said, so yeah, the idea that you have some information on the first line and then you add the prompt on the second line.
And you have to experiment with it and you can also then change the color on what color you want for your computer name if you want to show your IP address.
And you probably want to show your path where you are right now. And in front of it, he, I think he implemented a counter on how many comments you already have in your bash history.
My counter is at the moment that 673 and it is climbing, obviously, and day by day. Sometimes I clean it up a little bit if I was just doing some tests.
And this prompt in the, to tweak your prompt to your needs, it may take some time and may take some iteration.
You start with it, you, you live with it for a while and you realize you want to have more or less whatever. But it really came handy for me as well. And it's also one of the things I copy over.
And another thing which is nice is now as I have a counter and I see my history increase and increase.
And you can add a comment in your bash or see, which is called export his ignore, which is like history ignore. And then you can list some comments separated by not the semicolon, the other one, which is not a semicolon.
And so I have like PWD exit top clear history, just comments that I have in my alias, I have on the his ignore so that they do not add up on the, on the history of comments as they are already optimized to the maximum and shouldn't be kept in the history.
Yeah, so much about that.
One more thing about the bash or see is you can also print a Java version or something with Git as well. However, if you have a minimal installation, like you just do an APN server, for example, where you have no Java on it or no Git, it would then come up with an error as it cannot find the information.
And so you have to comment such lines or delete it, however, depends on your circumstance. Just that said, so you know about it, when you go to experiment with it, I encourage it. Of course, I really like it. I really like my version.
It is quite different, I guess, to the one where I began with. But yeah, really handy, as I said before.
Okay, this is it. If you like, leave a comment or send me a message. Have a nice one.
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