When developing software, no matter what technology you are working with there is no way around using the command line when you want to be a productive developer.

This a list of my favorite and most used shell commands and tricks that I learned over the years. I’m sure you know some of them already so feel to skip the ones you know but others might bring you a productivity boost and lets you show off your 1337 h4x0r $killz in front of your n00b colleagues.

Disclaimer: I use these commands on MacOS with Z Shell(Zsh) in Iterm2. As long as you are running a bash-like shell on a Unix & -like OS these commands should work for you as well. If you have a more exotic set up, you probably know your way around the shell to make these work yourself. If you run Powershell on Windows: Good Luck!

cd -

You probably know that you can use cd to change into a certain directory. But did you know you can use the dash (-) as an argument to go back to the previous directory?

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$ cd /home
~> home
$ cd /my_dir
~> /my_dir
$ cd -
~> /home

Bonus fact: The dash argument also works with git checkout, so you can e.g. quickly switch between master and a working branch.

For a larger directory history check out pushd and popd.

Shell History

Probably the most used shell trick I use is to press the up arrow (successively) to select the last commands of my shell history. Accompanied by ctrl + r (successively) to reverse search through my shell history by a keyword in LRU order.

Or type history directly to see the whole shell history in your terminal. You can then write ![number] to select the command at position number in your history.

You can even use a negative number as that index to select the k-th last command, like so:

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$ echo second
$ echo last
$ !-2
-> echo second

!!

You can also include !! in your command, and it gets substituted with the previously executed command.

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$ apt-get install unicorn-factory
> [...] Permission denied
$ sudo !!
> sudo apt-get install unicorn-factory

!:[index]

Or you can select just parts of the last command by including !:[index] in your command and the word at the index [index] in the previous command gets inserted.

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$ echo hello world
> hello world
$ echo !:1
> hello

You can even select ranges with [index]-[index] …

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$ echo live long and prosper
> live long and prosper
$ echo !:3-4
> and prosper

!^ !$

There are also shortcuts for the first(!^), and the last(!$) parameters of the previous command.

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$ echo live long and prosper
> live long and prosper
$ echo !^ !$
> live prosper

Editing the current line

This can be especially useful when you have just selected a command from the history which needs some slight change.

You can move your cursor to the beginning of the line by pressing ctrl + a and to the end of it by pressing ctrl + e (remember: e for _e_nd and a for, erm … the beginning of the alphabet(?))

Additionally:

• ctrl + w cuts the word to the left of the cursor
• alt + d cuts the word to the right of the cursor
• ctrl + k cuts everything to the right of the cursor
• ctrl + u cuts everything to the left of the cursor
• ctrl + y pastes back what you have just cut

ctrl + x + e

If you realize you actually need to make a bigger edit or write a longer command you can also switch to your editor and take current line with you.

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$ you are typing this really long command, maybe with some loop or some complex parsing logic and then realize you need more editing power so you press ctrl + e + x
BOOOM!
VIM(or Nano or VI etc.) opens with your command you had typed so far already in the buffer

Paste modified command from history

Instead of retrieving the last command and then modifying it in two separate steps you can also do it in one step.

^x^y gives you the previous command with x replaced by y

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$ gti status
> Command 'gti' not found,
$ ^gti^git
> git status

Handling multiple files with one command

You might have used commands like cp or mv before to handle files.

One of my favorite shortcut is the {} parameter expansion.

By using {} you instruct your shell to expand each value on the curly brackets.

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$ mv hello_world.{js,html} static

This command moves both the hello_world.js file and the hello_world.html file without needing to type hello_world. twice.

You can also use ranges…

The following command moves 5 files (file1.png, file2.png, file3.png, file4.png, and file5.png) to the backup/ directory.

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$ mv file{1..5}.png backup/

As there are many more commands that will help you be productive I will be constantly updating this list when I come across new jewels, so you might want to bookmark this article for future references.

In the meantime share your favorite command in the comments.