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Terminal/shell tricks

Useful terminal shortcuts

Shortcut What it does?
C-x C-e Edits the current line in the $EDITOR program, or vi if undefined.
C-x C-r Read in the contents of the inputrc file, and incorporate any bindings or variable assignments found there.
C-x C-u Incremental undo, separately remembered for each line.
C-x C-v Display version information about the current instance of bash.
In zsh switch to line vi mode (equivalent to bindkey -v)? Exit with Ctrl-c
C-x C-x Alternates the cursor with its old position. (C-x, because x has a crossing shape).
C-x * Inline shell expansion

Alacritty specific

Shortcut What it does?
Ctl-Shift-SPC Enter vi mode. Press again to leave.
Ctl-Shift-C Copy selection
Ctl-Shift-V Paste clipboard content

Regex hints

  • Recognizing URLs and executing open command. Put this into ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml:
      hints:
        enabled:
    ​     - regex: "(ipfs:|ipns:|magnet:|mailto:|gemini:|gopher:|https:|http:|news:|file:|git:|ssh:|ftp:)\
                    [^\u0000-\u001F\u007F-\u009F<>\"\\s{-}\\^⟨⟩`]+"
           command: xdg-open
           post_processing: true
           mouse:
             enabled: true
             mods: None
           binding:
             key: U
             mods: Control|Shift
    
    Now you can press Ctrl-Shift-U to get hints overlay (a letter for each recognized URL on the terminal). Press the letter to execute xdg-open over the matched content (URL).

Color schemes with dynamic change

Nice color schemes can be found in eendroroy/alacritty-theme repo.

git clone https://github.com/eendroroy/alacritty-theme.git ~/.alacritty-colorscheme

Link to default location:

ln -s ~/.alacritty-colorscheme/themes ~/.config/alacritty/colors

Color scheme can be applied either statically inside alacritty config:

import:
  - ~/.alacritty-colorscheme/themes/{scheme_name}.yaml

or dynamically using alacritty-colorscheme:

pip install --user alacritty-colorscheme

List schemes by:

alacritty-colorscheme list

See current scheme by:

alacritty-colorscheme status

Toggle by:

alacritty-colorscheme -V toggle wombat.yaml papercolor_light.yaml

Make keybinding in ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml:

key_bindings:
  - { key: F12, command: { program: "alacritty-colorscheme", args: ["-V",  "toggle",  "wombat.yaml",  "papercolor_light.yaml"] } }

Spawn a new instance in the same directory

Add to ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml:

key_bindings:
  - { key: Return,   mods: Control|Shift, action: SpawnNewInstance }

Tricks with zsh and oh-my-zsh

Go up to the root of Git repo :oh-my-zsh:

Put this in .zshrc:

plugins+=(git)

This adds alias grc that cd to the root of the repo. For other aliases see here.

Source.