I thought the title meant I should type ,ls instead of ls.
Like so?
Also, kudos to keeping it so concise and to the point, thats some prime writing.
2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40769362
If I introduce an alias (like `grep='grep --binary-files=without-match --ignore-case --color=auto`) that matches the name of a system binary - I probably do that intentionally.
And if I EVER need to call grep without my alias - I just prefix it with a backslash: \grep will search with case sensitivity and no color and will scan binaries.
... and breaks existing scripts that reference the system one, right?
Because I cannot imagine much 3rd party scripts working with random flags added to core tools
I've never had this collision problem yet, despite appending my script directory to the end, but I'll use either of the above solutions if that ever becomes a problem.
I started using a prefix because I like very short script names that are easy to type
I prefer giving scripts numbers instead of names
Something like "[number"
I use prefixes and suffixes to group related scripts together, e.g., scripts that run other scripts
I have an executable directory like ~/bin but it's not called bin. It contains 100s of short scripts
I'd prefer to use underscore (when writing BASH scripts, I name all my local variables starting with underscore), but a simple two or three letter prefix would also work. I don't like the idea of a punctuation prefix as punctuation usually has a specific meaning somewhere and including it as the first character in a filename looks wrong. (e.g. Comma is typically used as a list separator and it's a bit of cognitive dissonance to see it not used in that context)
It went weird pretty quickly...
Easy autocomplete, I know there won't be any collision, and which command is mine.
I create a home directory "x" for executables that I want to manage as files, and don't want on PATH or as alias.
To run foo: ~/x/foo
For example I have GNU date as ~/x/date so it's independent of the system BSD date.
Every tool and shell that lay in arm's reach treated the comma as a perfectly normal and unobjectionable character in a filename.
~/.local was only invented around 2003 and gained widespread usage maybe 15 years or so ago...
People used ~/bin already in the 90s ;-)
`.local/bin` seems to be much more common in my experience for this use case. And for good reason.
quick, easy and consistent. entirely voluntary.
Bravo
If we want to stay within (lowercase) alphabetic Latin characters I think prefixing with the least common letters or bigrams that start a word (x, q, y, z, j) is best.
`y' for instance only autocompletes to `yes' and `ypdomainname' on my path.
Choosing a unique bigram is actually quite easy and a fun exercise.
And we can always use uppercase Latin letters since commands very rarely use never mind start with those.
Off-topic: What the hell is that font on this website? And why does the "a" look like that?
sevg•1h ago
Neat trick! I don’t think I’ll namespace everything this way, because there’s some aliases and commands I run so often that the comma would get annoying, but for other less frequently used helper scripts then this will be perfect!
pjerem•1h ago
stavros•1h ago
bonzini•54m ago
This convention was suggested by the GNU Arch version control system years ago (maybe 20??), but it's really useful for the same tab completion reason and I have kept it for almost two decades, even when I switched to git.
amszmidt•8m ago
File names or directories starting with a comma where considered “junk”, and ones with a plus sign I think where considered “precious”.