Command linux tools: find (exec), bat, fzf, exa, ripgrep, youtube-dl, xclip

Exa/lsd

exa is a modern replacement for ls: brew install exa (macOS), sudo pacman -Sy –noconfirmm exa (Arch), apt install exa (Ubuntu).

• lsd is a rewrite of ls with lot of added features like colors, icons, tree-view, etc. Windows (scoop install lsd); macOS (brew install lsd); Ubuntu/Debian (sudo dpkg -i lsd_0.22.0_amd64.deb get .deb); Arch (pacman -S lsd).

Bat

Bat is a cat clone with wings, it supports syntax highlighting and Git integration.

1. Installation: choco install bat (Windows), sudo apt install bat (Ubuntu), pacman -S bat (Arch).
2. If you install bat this way, the executable may be installed as batcat instead of bat. You can set up a bat–> batcat symlink: ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat.
   Replace cat with bat, nvim .zsh_aliases: alias cat=‘bat ‐‐style=plain’

ripgrep

ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern.

Installation: brew install ripgrep (macOS), choco install ripgrep (Windows), pacman -S ripgrep (Arch), sudo apt-get install ripgrep (Debian, Ubuntu).

How do I find all files containing a specific text? Using grep: grep -rnw “/path/to/somewhere” -e “specificText” (-r: recursive; -n: line number; w: match the whole world). Using ripgrep: ripgrep “specificText/pattern” /path/

Youtube-dl

youtube-dl download videos from YouTube.com or other video platforms.

Find is more than it looks (exec option)

# Recursively delete files with a particular extension using the find command
find . -type f -name "*.ext" -exec rm -v {} \;

There are two parts:

1. find . -type f -name “.ext” . Search for regular files (-type -f, i.e., it excludes directories, symbolic links, etc.) with the .ext extension (-name “.ext”, e.g., txt, jpg, md, etc.) in the current directory (.)

2. -exec rm -v {} ; . This is the second part, it executes rm, i.e., remove each file found by the previous order (find). The {} is a placeholder for the found filenames. The ; indicates the end of the -exec command.

Fzf

fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.

1. Installation: Windows (choco install fzf)

     brew install fzf # macOS
     $(brew --prefix)/opt/fzf/install # To install useful key bindings and fuzzy completion
   
     git clone ‐‐depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf # GNU/Linux
     ~/.fzf/install 
   

   Do you want to enable fuzzy auto-completion? ([y]/n) y
   Do you want to enable key bindings? ([y]/n) y
   Do you want to update your shell configuration files? ([y]/n) y
   It will add this line (vim .bashrc): [ -f ~/.fzf.bash ] && source ~/.fzf.bash

2. Let’s find files ending with .md: fzf ‐‐query=.md$

3. Fuzzy search can be triggered with **: cd **<TAB>, cd ~/.config/cal**<TAB> (it searches for files and directories under ~/.config that match `cal`: /home/myUser/.config/calcurse), vim .config/default.yml** (my first result is .config/espanso/default.yml). Fuzzy completion for PIDs is provided for the kill command: kill -9 . You may also want to preview the files: fzf ‐‐preview ‘cat {}’

4. You could use bat for this purpose. Use: fzf ‐‐preview ‘bat ‐‐color=always ‐‐style=numbers ‐‐line-range=:500 {}’

   nvim .bash_aliases/.zsh_aliases: #Credits: Luke Smith.

   alias prev="fzf ‐‐preview 'bat ‐‐style=numbers ‐‐color=always {}'"
   searchEdit() { du -a ~/Dropbox/ ~/.config/ | awk '{print $2}' | fzf | xargs -r $EDITOR ; }
   

• Use: searchEdit. du, lists recursively files and directories and their sizes in ~/Dropbox/ and ~/.config/.
• awk ‘{print $2}’ is used to get rid of their sizes.
• fzf performs a fuzzy search on the previous list.
• Finally, xargs runs the edit command. xargs -r means: “do not run the command if it is empty.”

Xclip or pbcopy

Copy and paste at the command line with xclip (GNU/Linux) or pbcopy (macOS):

It is a command-line clipboard manager. It enables you to copy the standard input from your terminal to your clipboard, so you can paste it to a GUI application (gedit, atom, brave, etc.)

Use. Copy a file into the clipboard: cat file | xclip -sel clip. Let’s copy a password to the clipboard: pass Root/Ocio/amazon.es | xclip -sel clip. To paste the text you just copied, you should use: xclip -selection clipboard -o