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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> + |