Sure… there’s “cd” to change directories and tab completion. But there’s more than that.  Here’s some other tips for getting around quickly in a Bash shell.

First, with “cd” there are some built in shortcuts. Most know of “~”. “~” expands to the current users homedir.

• cd ~
• cd ~/.kde
• cd ~/Desktop

There’s also “-”. “-” expands to the variable of $OLDPWD, which is always the previous directory you were just in.

1. cd /usr/local (change to /usr/local)
2. cd ~ (change to users home dir)
3. cd – (pops you back to /usr/local)

Bash bang commands can be used for shortcuts too.

• !! = last line in history
• !* = all args from last line in history
• !$ = last arg from last line in history
• !^ = first arg from last line in history

I really only use !$ with the cd command. Here’s some examples, although some not really useful. Just to give you an idea of what it does:

1. which php (maybe it outputs /usr/local/bin/php)
2. `!!` /path/to/php_script.php (executes php on the script)

1. ls /usr/local/src
2. cd !$ (cd’s to /usr/local/src)

1. ls *.gz *.txt *.bz2 (do a quick scan on the files listed, confirm they’re the right ones)
2. rm !* (remove ‘em all)

There’s also the Alt-. (that’s alt + period) shortcut. This will cycle through the last arg of all commands in your bash history. Try it out, just keep hitting alt-. over and over. Can be quite useful.

“pushd” and “popd”. These are great for using in scripts. “pushd” puts a directory on a stack and moves you to that directory. “popd” pops your current directory off the stack and moves you to the directory under it. Example:

hadley@rhadley-laptop:~$ pwd
/home/rhadley
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:~$ pushd /usr/
/usr ~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:/usr$ pushd /usr/local/
/usr/local /usr ~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:/usr/local$ pushd /etc/
/etc /usr/local /usr ~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:/etc$ popd
/usr/local /usr ~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:/usr/local$ popd
/usr ~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:/usr$ popd
~
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:~$ popd
bash: popd: directory stack empty
rhadley@rhadley-laptop:~$

Well… my brain is fried and it’s too late in the day for extra caffeine, so that’ll have to be it. But, look here for tips on making your tab completion more powerful. It’ll even complete command line arguments for commands that support it.

Bash Tip #1: Reverse Incremental Searching. Quickly jumping through your bash history is super easy to do if you know about reverse incremental searching. I was shocked when I found out this existed with being a Bash lover for so long and not knowing of it.

To try it out:

1. Open a bash prompt on a server that you have a good size history on.
2. Press ctrl-r.
3. Type what you want to search for.

As an example, say you run a web server and periodically you login and update the awstats data. You know, on days when you know traffic is up and you don’t want to wait for the next cron’d awstats update. And since you have it cron’d you haven’t bothered with setting up a script to do these periodic updates, so you’re lazy and just type in the awstats command by hand. Here’s what I do:

1. SSH to the web server.
2. Press ctrl-r.
3. Type: update.
4. Bash will then show you the last command you entered with the word “update” in it.
5. If it’s not the right command, just press ctrl-r until you find the right command.
6. Once you’re on the right command, just press enter.

It’s kind of like having mini scripts saved in your history. You just have to know what to reverse search for in order to bring it up the fastest.

Another example: You just compiled php on a server the other day and it turns out the developers needed gd support compiled in. Since you know the ./configure line is still somewhere in your history:

1. SSH to the server with php installed on it.
2. cd to to the php src dir.
3. Press ctrl-r.
4. Type this (or as much as you need to for configure lines to show): ./config
5. If it’s the wrong ./configure line then press ctrl-r until you find the right line.
6. Once you find the right line press ctrl-e. This should jump you to the end of that line and pop you out of reverse incremental search mode.
7. Add –with-gd and hit enter.

Once you get hooked you feel uncomfortable in other shells that lack it.