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| author | Steph Enders <steph@senders.io> | 2024-03-07 15:17:29 -0500 | 
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| committer | Steph Enders <steph@senders.io> | 2024-03-07 15:17:29 -0500 | 
| commit | 1f689fd039533801842ae241671f2437ddbe0044 (patch) | |
| tree | 50d3db88f2c7e676d6679696a101e6ae2b25448f /posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html | |
| parent | 80f5dacf988b1cddd04eea6c4a6f70b165376764 (diff) | |
Copy old files and update build.sh to generate it all!
This is a huge messy commit but :) sue me. I'm not at work I can do
git badly for once!
Diffstat (limited to 'posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html | 50 | 
1 files changed, 50 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html b/posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9ede49 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/remember-recall-what-couldve-been-a-command-line-tool.html @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ + +--post-date: 2020-02-16 +--type: blog +    <article> +      <h1>remember/recall - what could've been a command line tool</h1> +      <p>During a meeting at work when I realized I often forget useful +      commands. So I had the bright idea to create a command line tool that +      would basically append a file with the command you wanted to remember +      that you could search over later if you wanted to recall a certain +      command. I figured I could it could just be a simple bash script that +      recalls your bash-history and appends it to a file, all things that are +      incredibly easy to do... or so I thought.</p> +      <h2>Look before you leap</h2> +      <p>This article is a reminder to myself to test the core functionality +      first, before decorating your program/script with all those bells and +      whistles. While I did learn a lot in the process it is always a good to +      check the basics first.</p> +      <h2>What went right</h2> +      <p>I actually ended up learning a lot during the development of the +      (never finished) tool. I had never used <code>getopts</code> inside a +      script before, which turned out to be extremely intuitive. That was all +      that went right...</p> +      <h2>What went wrong</h2> +      <p>Literally, everything else that could've went wrong did. The +      "project" was a single bash script roughly 160 lines long +      before I found out it wouldn't work. It was a series of flags that +      enabled actions that called functions, some of which ended the script +      either successfully or not. It wasn't necessarily a mess to read (I +      tried to make it that every function ended up in an exit so I knew if I +      entered I would need to assume it terminated) but it was hard to follow +      when writing. I tried to allow it so you could default an action to make +      the CLI intuitive which lead to a messy set of if/elses and switch +      cases.</p> +      <h3>You can't access un-committed bash history</h3> +      <p>History command in a bash shell commits the history at the end of the +      session. This makes sense once you know this, there are a lot of reasons +      saving the commands to file after every execution is probably not the +      best idea. However, it can be enabled with a flag when you enable a shell +      session. But I didn't want to build a tool that required me to +      remember I had to add something to my bash_profile before it would work. +      I wanted something I could just copy onto a new machine and have access +      to its functionality.</p> +      <h2>Lesson learned</h2> +      <p>While developing a tool to help me remember things, I learned +      something I cannot forget: Test the core, simplest functionality first. +      Before you do anything validate what you're trying to do will work. +      Because after building all of these fancy bells and whistles, if it +      can't do the basics, there is no point.</p> +    </article> +  |