Linux Command Line Alternatives – blog.nshephard.dev

The command line is my second home when sat at a computer (Emacs is my first ;-) and the UNIX Philosophy is the key to the huge amount of highly productive tools that are available under UNIX, GNU/Linux, BSD, OSX, PowerShell etc.

Many of these tools work and have done for many years, but there are some new alternatives that are coming through that build and modernise on these tools without breaking the core functionality. Here I detail some of the tools and why you might want to use them. Each tool has a brief introduction with some example output shown and then some aliases listed that you can drop into ~/.bash_aliases or ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/aliases to use on your system.

Alternatives

`bat`

bat is “A cat(1) clone with wings.”. It automatically uses syntax highlighting and integrates with git if a file is version controlled to show changes and lots more. You can pipe input to it, including from e.g. curl -s https://server.com/some_file

Example - `bat`

❱ bat pyproject.toml
───────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────
       │ File: pyproject.toml
───────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────
   1   │ [build-system]
   2   │ requires = [
   3   │   "setuptools",
   4   │   "versioneer==0.26",
   5   │   "wheel"]
   6   │ build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
   7   │
   8   │ [tool.black]
   9   │ line-length = 120
  10   │ target-version = ['py38', 'py39', 'py310']
  11   │ include = '\.pyi?$'
───────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────

Configuration

You can generate a default configuration file with

bat --generate-config-file

This will be saved at ~/.config/bat/config and you can edit it as desired.

`cheat`

cheat is actually a web-service that returns short “cheats” for command line programmes which will often cover many use cases and save you having to read the rather dry man pages for functions.

Example - `cheat`

❱ cheat cheat
 cheat:cheat
# To see example usage of a program:
cheat <command>

# To edit a cheatsheet
cheat -e <command>

# To list available cheatsheets
cheat -l

# To search available cheatsheets
cheat -s <command>

# To get the current `cheat' version
cheat -v

 tldr:cheat
# cheat
# Create and view interactive cheat sheets on the command-line.
# More information: <https://github.com/cheat/cheat>.

# Show example usage of a command:
cheat command

# Edit the cheat sheet for a command:
cheat -e command

# List the available cheat sheets:
cheat -l

# Search available the cheat sheets for a specified command name:
cheat -s command

# Get the current cheat version:
cheat -v

Aliases - `cheat`

You don’t need to install anything to use this, instead define an alias for your shell (e.g. in ~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/aliases.zsh).

## Linux commands https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sheets
cheat () {
    curl cheat.sh/"$@"
}

`difftastic`

difftastic (GitHub) is an alternative to the default GNU diff packaged with most systems. It is “aware” of some 30 or so programming languages and will show diffs side-by-side rather than the traditional linear manner. It integrates easily with Git so when you git diff it uses difft to show the differences.

Highly recommended, but don’t take my word for it, give it a whirl yourself.

`duf`

duf is a nice alternative to the traditional du and df commands which report disk usage and file/directory usage respectively.

Examples

❱ tldr duf

  duf

  Disk Usage/Free Utility.
  More information: https://github.com/muesli/duf.

  - List accessible devices:
    duf

  - List everything (such as pseudo, duplicate or inaccessible file systems):
    duf --all

  - Only show specified devices or mount points:
    duf path/to/directory1 path/to/directory2 ...

  - Sort the output by a specified criteria:
  duf --sort size|used|avail|usage

❱ duf
╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 4 local devices                                                                              │
├────────────┬────────┬───────┬────────┬───────────────────────────────┬──────┬────────────────┤
│ MOUNTED ON │   SIZE │  USED │  AVAIL │              USE%             │ TYPE │ FILESYSTEM     │
├────────────┼────────┼───────┼────────┼───────────────────────────────┼──────┼────────────────┤
│ /          │  19.5G │  9.5G │   9.0G │ [#########...........]  48.9% │ ext4 │ /dev/mmcblk0p2 │
│ /boot      │ 199.8M │ 38.8M │ 161.0M │ [###.................]  19.4% │ vfat │ /dev/mmcblk0p1 │
│ /home      │   9.3G │  3.7G │   5.0G │ [########............]  40.4% │ ext4 │ /dev/mmcblk0p3 │
│ /mnt/usb   │   4.5T │  3.2T │   1.1T │ [##############......]  71.3% │ ext4 │ /dev/sda1      │
╰────────────┴────────┴───────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────┴──────┴────────────────╯
╭───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 6 special devices                                                                                 │
├────────────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────────────────────────┬──────────┬────────────┤
│ MOUNTED ON     │   SIZE │   USED │  AVAIL │              USE%             │ TYPE     │ FILESYSTEM │
├────────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────┤
│ /dev           │   3.7G │     0B │   3.7G │                               │ devtmpfs │ dev        │
│ /dev/shm       │   3.9G │     0B │   3.9G │                               │ tmpfs    │ tmpfs      │
│ /run           │   3.9G │ 812.0K │   3.9G │ [....................]   0.0% │ tmpfs    │ run        │
│ /run/user/1001 │ 789.3M │  20.0K │ 789.3M │ [....................]   0.0% │ tmpfs    │ tmpfs      │
│ /run/user/966  │ 789.3M │  24.0K │ 789.2M │ [....................]   0.0% │ tmpfs    │ tmpfs      │
│ /tmp           │   3.9G │   4.0K │   3.9G │ [....................]   0.0% │ tmpfs    │ tmpfs      │
╰────────────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────┴──────────┴────────────╯

`fd`

fd is an alternative to find that is easier to use. It is “opinionated” (i.e. decisions have been made about default options that you may not agree with) but purportedly covers ~80% of use cases. It works directly with regular expressions.

Example - `fd`

❱ tldr fd

  fd

  An alternative to `find`.
  Aims to be faster and easier to use than `find`.
  More information: https://github.com/sharkdp/fd.

  - Recursively find files matching the given pattern in the current directory:
    fd pattern

  - Find files that begin with "foo":
    fd '^foo'

  - Find files with a specific extension:
    fd --extension txt

  - Find files in a specific directory:
    fd pattern path/to/directory

  - Include ignored and hidden files in the search:
    fd --hidden --no-ignore pattern

  - Execute a command on each search result returned:
    fd pattern --exec command

`jq`

jq is to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) what awk/grep/sed is to text files. It allows parsing, searching and selecting of JSON files, which if you’ve not encountered them before take a bit of getting used to.

Example - `jq`

Details of using jq are really beyond the scope of this short article, like awk its almost a language in itself.

❱ tldr jq

  jq

  A command-line JSON processor that uses a domain-specific language.
  More information: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/.

  - Execute a specific expression (print a colored and formatted json):
    cat path/to/file.json | jq '.'

  - Execute a specific script:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq --from-file path/to/script.jq

  - Pass specific arguments:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq --arg "name1" "value1" --arg "name2" "value2" ... '. + $ARGS.named'

  - Print specific keys:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq '.key1, .key2, ...'

  - Print specific array items:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq '.[index1], .[index2], ...'

  - Print all array items/object keys:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq '.[]'

  - Add/remove specific keys:
    cat path/to/file.json | jq '. +|- {"key1": "value1", "key2": "value2", ...}'

`lsd`

lsd is lsDeluxe and is very similar to exa but with a few additions such as icons.

Example - `lsd`

❱ l
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  144 B  Sun Aug 14 19:56:53 2022  #.gitlab-ci.yml#
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Sep 15 22:21:25 2022  .
drwxrwxr-x root users 4.0 KB Tue Aug 30 20:46:37 2022  ..
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Sep 15 22:21:56 2022  .git
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Sun Aug 14 21:51:03 2022  .github
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  613 B  Sun Aug 14 21:44:38 2022  .gitignore
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  151 B  Sun Aug 14 19:56:13 2022  .gitlab-ci.yml
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Sep 15 22:21:25 2022  .quarto
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  386 B  Thu Sep 15 22:05:23 2022  _quarto.yaml
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  263 B  Sun Aug 14 10:59:13 2022  _quarto.yml~
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Sep 15 22:05:24 2022  _site
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  1.1 KB Thu Sep 15 22:05:23 2022  about.qmd
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  455 B  Sun Aug 14 11:02:13 2022  about.qmd~
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Sep 15 22:05:23 2022  img
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  185 B  Sun Aug 14 22:22:04 2022  index.qmd
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  191 B  Sun Aug 14 10:59:13 2022  index.qmd~
.rw-r--r-- neil neil   34 KB Sun Aug 14 21:14:38 2022  LICENSE
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  1.7 KB Thu Sep 15 22:05:23 2022  links.qmd
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  237 B  Thu Sep 15 21:46:30 2022  links.qmd~
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Wed Sep 14 20:24:25 2022  posts
.rw-r--r-- neil neil  378 B  Thu Aug 25 23:20:16 2022  README.md
.rw-r--r-- neil neil   13 B  Sun Aug 14 21:58:38 2022  requirements.txt
.rw-r--r-- neil neil   17 B  Sun Aug 14 21:24:35 2022  styles.css
drwxr-xr-x neil neil  4.0 KB Thu Aug 25 23:20:16 2022  www

Aliases - `lsd`

alias ls='lsd'
alias l='ls -lha'
alias lla='ls -la'
alias lt='ls --tree'

`tldr`

tldr is very similar to cheat in that it shows short, simple examples of using a command. There are a number of different clients written in C, Node and Python as well as a few others. It depends on jq so you will have to install that if you want to use yq.

Example - `tldr`

❱ tldr tldr

  tldr

  Display simple help pages for command-line tools from the tldr-pages project.
  More information: https://tldr.sh.

  - Print the tldr page for a specific command (hint: this is how you got here!):
    tldr command

  - Print the tldr page for a specific subcommand:
    tldr command-subcommand

  - Print the tldr page for a command for a specific [p]latform:
    tldr -p android|linux|osx|sunos|windows command

  - [u]pdate the local cache of tldr pages:
    tldr -u

`yq`

yq is to YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) what jq is to JSON. Written in Python it allows fast and efficient parsing, searching and selecting of YAML files.

Example - `yq`

❱ tldr yq

  yq

  A lightweight and portable command-line YAML processor.
  More information: https://mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/.

  - Output a YAML file, in pretty-print format (v4+):
    yq eval path/to/file.yaml

  - Output a YAML file, in pretty-print format (v3):
    yq read path/to/file.yaml --colors

  - Output the first element in a YAML file that contains only an array (v4+):
    yq eval '.[0]' path/to/file.yaml

  - Output the first element in a YAML file that contains only an array (v3):
    yq read path/to/file.yaml '[0]'

  - Set (or overwrite) a key to a value in a file (v4+):
    yq eval '.key = "value"' --inplace path/to/file.yaml

  - Set (or overwrite) a key to a value in a file (v3):
    yq write --inplace path/to/file.yaml 'key' 'value'

  - Merge two files and print to stdout (v4+):
    yq eval-all 'select(filename == "path/to/file1.yaml") * select(filename == "path/to/file2.yaml")' path/to/file1.yaml path/to/file2.yaml

  - Merge two files and print to stdout (v3):
    yq merge path/to/file1.yaml path/to/file2.yaml --colors

Installation

Most of these programmes will be available in your systems package manager, if they are not you should consult the project page directly for install instructions.

Linux

# Gentoo
emerge -av bat duf fd jq lsd tldr yq

# Arch
pacman -Syu bat duf fd jq lsd tldr yq

# Ubuntu
sudo apt-install bat duf fd jq lsd tldr yq

OSX

brew install bat duf fd jq lsd tldr yq

Windows

WARNING None of these have been tested I do not have access to a Windows system running PowerShell. They use Scoop a command-line installer for Windows.

scoop install lsd

Reuse

CC BY 4.0

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{shephard2022,
  author = {Shephard, Neil},
  title = {Linux {Command} {Line} {Alternatives}},
  date = {2022-09-18},
  url = {https://blog.nshephard.dev/posts/cli-alternatives/},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Shephard, Neil. 2022. “Linux Command Line Alternatives.” September 18, 2022. https://blog.nshephard.dev/posts/cli-alternatives/.

Alternatives

bat

Example - bat

Configuration

cheat

Example - cheat

Aliases - cheat

difftastic

duf