Most Useful Command Line Tools to Make Your DevOps and Networking Life Efficient
Have you ever witnessed any scene in a series or movie that features hackers? More frequently than not, these individuals are presented working in the face of monitors that flashes some kind of terminal (typically with a light foreground and dark background). This terminal tends to be swamped with moving characters that have specific meaning to the person seeing them.
Licensed developers frequently ridicule such images of hackers in action, and there are even specific systems that mimic several hacker influences, just for enjoyment. In the real world, however, command-line tools are not utilized for their leisure value.
If you would like to turn out to be a console dweller, you should train yourself with the least possible set of command-line tools—-the basics.
Operating System: macOS
fasd
One of the first troubles when at work in the command-line can be summarized in this question: How do you go to your project folder? Certainly typing cd ~/an/incredibly/long/path will get aged very fast.
Fortunately, fasd can surely assist with that. Once installed and arranged, it snoops wordlessly as you cd to your several folders. As quickly as you do, though, it recalls its path and lets you do it much quicker next time.
mackup
So, you got your apps configured. Now, what will come about once your computer gets replaced or even dies? In this situation, mackup is a very straightforward way to back up your configurations to any cloud storage like Dropbox.
Its approach is ingenious. Instead of producing schedules, all it does is copies the file or folder to your Dropbox and supersedes the previous with the symlink.
The apps go on working with the configurations typically, but they’re, in fact, revising them on your Dropbox. With mackup, each configuration switch you make is instantly back-upped by Dropbox or any of your cloud storage.
Operating System: Windows
assoc
Your computer links specific file extensions with particular programs. This is precisely how the computer gets to start MS Word when double-clicking a DOC file and open Adobe when double-clicking a PDF file.
You can see every file association your computer understands by typing ASSOC in your computer’s command window. As you do it, you will find out the file extension as well as the program it is linked with.
ipconfig
Troubleshooting a network is not at all easy. However, IPCONFIG is a command that turns it from a complicated one to a much easier process.
Making use of this command in your CMD command prompt sends back thorough information regarding your existing network adapter connection containing the subnet mask, current domain, default gateway IP, and your current IP address.
This information can assist you in troubleshooting router matters and other connection problems you could be experiencing with the network adapter.
Operating System: Linux
pageres-cli
As a web developer, you’ll often get yourself needing to capture website snapshots of the products (take for example the Patek Philippe watch). Why? Because you need to give them to your work colleagues or clients.
The pageres-cli is adept at taking up to more than 100 photographs from ten unique websites in only less than a minute, significantly slashing down on the hassle and time of holding dozens of screenshots separately.
caniuse-cmd
When you’re at work on something specific, the very last thing you need is to be disturbed by your productivity and workflow. However, being a developer requires that you frequently have to check for mistakes and errors, particularly about function management, all through various browsers.
Takeaway
So, what’s so fascinating about the command line that counteracts the times devoted to understanding how to use the editor, the shell, and every switch of several apps? The brief answer to that is efficiency, which emanates from two factors.
First, when you’re offered with merely a terminal window and nothing else, you can concentrate more passionately as there’s not a lot to disturb you. There are no ads, no pictures of cute animals, and no notifications. It’s only you, as well as your target.
Another factor is automation. You can put some regularly related functions in a script and call it after as a whole instead of typing them everything by hand every single time. In essence, you can document and replay everything, and the code is accessible as a record of what you did.
Understanding CLI commands and utilizing quality tools can get you more fruitful. Not only that, but it can also unlock doors to a variety of tactics to automation that is more sensible with textual lines than with the GUI apps.
