s/Emacs/Vim/ but yeah same thing here. Ultimately any solution for this must be scriptable.
For example, can this new terminal automatically transpose file names in command output from one directory to another? The build process I'm working with copies source files and applies patches to them. My gF in Vim automatically checks the preferred source directory, replaces the file prefix and adjusts line numbers by matching similar lines so that any added patches don't mess them up.
Excellent thinking, making the text hypertext and opening up for ad hoc composability. Ah, the joys of re-discovering the Plan 9 tech. Here specifically the Acme IDE, and also to certain extent the Rio WM.
I use tmux in all my terminal sessions. It can search. It's not grep, but 95% of the time it's enough and the 5% I capture the output to a file myself using tmux's it's copy/paste function. I wouldn't mind such functionality if it wasn't mouse-based. But switching terminal just for this not. But seeing an idea executed it always nice.
The terminal is such a relic. The only thing going for it is that it's always fast.
Every single time I use it I would prefer GUI output, and a proper scripting language like Python or JS.
For output I want datagrids with search, sort, group, filter, and expandable rows. Think about how many times you are looking at massive logs of some build and you just want to view the context of one build stage. Or you want to jump back to an error.
- it's super easy to use the output of one program as the input of another, and to integrate it in bigger scripts.
- it's much more discoverable. when Mac users tell me they discovered tricks like holding right click at the screen corner or whatever, I'm telling them about `--help`.
- it prevents loosing context - I'm not switching windows all the time
- it always works. usually the same. and everywhere: on my laptop, on my server, on my phone.
These are just some reasons why I love it, but I'm sure there are others. and btw if you're really into search, sort, group filtering etc - maybe you should check out nushell.
> it's super easy to use the output of one program as the input of another, and to integrate it in bigger scripts
This can be done with Python/TypeScript code and it would be much more maintainable and typesafe. I don't know anyone who enjoys writing bash scripts over TypeScript code.
> I'm telling them about `--help`
Auto-complete in a text editor is far superior.
> - it always works. usually the same. and everywhere: on my laptop, on my server, on my phone.
> This can be done with Python/TypeScript code and it would be much more maintainable and typesafe. I don't know anyone who enjoys writing bash scripts over TypeScript code.
I'm talking about doing stuff like `cat file.json| jq -r .some.thing | base64 -d > file.txt`. What even _is_ the GUI for this? and is writing this in Python/TS actually better? it's not even more maintainable. ever tried going back to your Python/TS project after a few years, setting up the environment from scratch and all? It's awful...
> Auto-complete in a text editor is far superior.
but GUI apps aren't text editors. I'm saying it's much easier for me to run `youtube-dl --help | grep something_i_am_looking_for` than to search for it in some youtube-dl interface.
If only the shell already had a tool for this...