Command Line Tools

I use many CLI tools.

cheat.sh & eg are useful. Command Line Interface Guidelines are great.

Favorite

• ripgrep - Line-oriented search tool that recursively searches your current directory for a regex pattern. (Andrew Gallant, creator of ripgrep - Sourcegraph Podcast (2020)) (Lobsters)
• fzf - Command-line fuzzy finder. (Advanced Examples)
• Watchexec - Essential for running code and auto reloading on file save changes.

Interesting

• rga - Ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc. (Article) (HN)

Notes

• Look into gh cli for example of a well designed CLI. The -h is amazing.

Links

• Awesome command line tools
• Ask HN: What are your favorite terminal programs?
• What's an awesome Linux/Unix command that you wish someone had told you about earlier?
• Awesome Console Services
• tldr - Collection of simplified and community-driven man pages. (Web)
• Awesome jq - Curated list of awesome things built with the JSON processor and turing-complete functional language jq.
• cli.fan blog - Introduction.
• One Things Well blog - Weblog about simple, useful software.
• Terminals Are Sexy - Curated list of Terminal frameworks, plugins & resources for CLI lovers.
• Inconsolation - Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux.
• Arabesque - Systems, Tools, and Terminal Science.
• The Art of Command Line
• cheat - Allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. (HN)
• hyperfine - Command-line benchmarking tool.
• An Illustrated Guide to Useful Command Line Tools (2019) (Lobsters) (HN)
• uutils coreutils - Coreutils Rewritten in Rust. (HN)
• The Language Agnostic, All-Purpose, Incredible, Makefile (2019) (Lobsters) (HN)
• CLI: improved (2018)
• Awesome CLI apps
• Fast Searching with ripgrep (2020)
• Awk in 20 Minutes (HN)
• Grep for System Admins: Using Grep to Automate Daily Tasks (2020)
• Command line interfaces are reified UIs (2017) (HN) (Lobsters)
• My Favorite CLI Tools (2020) (HN)
• wttr.in - Console-oriented weather forecast service. (HN)
• Structured text tools - List of text-based file formats and command line tools for manipulating each.
• Conventions for Command Line Options (2020) (HN)
• Rewritten in Rust: Modern Alternatives of Command-Line Tools (2020) (Lobsters)
• Search and replace tricks with ripgrep (2020) (Lobsters)
• What are your favorite non-standard CLI utils/applications (2020)
• cheat.sh - Unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets. Available via CLI. (Web)
• My growing list of Rust programs to use (Lobsters)
• dasel - Allows you to query and modify data structures using selector strings.
• You Don't Need GUI - CLI commands as alternatives to GUI. (HN)
• CLI Guidelines - Guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day. (Code) (HN) (Lobsters)
• nq - Utils for creating lightweight job queue systems. (HN)
• Building Rich Terminal Dashboards (2021) (HN)
• frawk - JITted and SIMD-optimized AWK written in Rust. (Lobsters) (HN)
• How to Handle Secrets on the Command Line (2021) (HN)
• Modern Unix - Collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.
• Awesome TUIs - List of projects that provide terminal user interfaces.
• Lobsters: What interesting command line tools do you use? (2021)
• binenv - One binary to rule them all. Manage all those pesky binaries (kubectl, helm, terraform, ...) easily.
• Command line tools for productive programmers (2021) (HN)
• Writing Programs with Ncurses (HN)
• Awk: The Power and Promise of a 40-Year-Old Language (2021) (HN)
• buke - Full text search man pages.
• Renamer - Rename files in bulk.
• CLI Testing Tool - Testing library that allows you to test input and outputs of your CLI command.
• bvm - Binary Version Manager.
• command-not-found.com - Install any command on any operating system.
• mdbook-man - Generate man pages from mdBooks.
• Powerful Terminal And Command-Line (CLI) Tools For Modern Web Development (2021)
• GoAWK - AWK interpreter written in Go. (Article)
• htop - Cross-platform interactive process viewer. (Web)
• hgrep - Grep with human-friendly search results.
• Ask HN: What are the best and worst command-line interfaces you have used? (2021)
• Command Line Magic Twitter (Web)
• Tips on adding JSON output to your CLI app (2021) (HN)
• Why and How to add changelog in your next CLI (2021)
• A practical overview of most useful Unix tools (2021) (HN)
• fq - jq for binary formats. (HN)
• termshot - Creates screenshots based on terminal command output.
• aqua - CLI tool to install CLI tools with declarative YAML configuration. (Docs)
• Supreme - Add configurations, GitHub actions and get started quickly with new projects.
• Bina - Installer for self-contained, single-file binaries, no additional CLI needed. (Code)
• Nice CLIs
• Charm - Tools to make the command line glamorous. (HN)
• Quick reference on command line tools and techniques
• Grep flags – the good stuff (HN)
• SnipKit - Snippet CLI manager for quickly accessing code snippets without leaving the terminal.
• pz - Easily handle CLI operation via Python instead of regular Bash programs. (HN)
• Scaffolder - Increasing dev velocity and standardizing file conventions.
• crispr - CLI tool allowing to scaffold a project from a template with a .crispr.{toml,json} configuration file.
• envy - Sets environment variables when you enter a directory.
• timer - sleep with progress.
• hwatch - Modern alternative to the watch command, records the differences in execution results and can check this differences at after.
• lets-run - Run a command when a certain file exists, and/or watch files to rerun on changes.
• eg - Useful examples at the command line.
• zf - Command line fuzzy finder that prioritizes matches on filenames.
• NO_COLOR - Disabling ANSI color output in various Unix commands. (HN)
• igrep - Interactive Grep.
• Argc - Handy way to handle sh/bash cli parameters.
• qsv - Ultra-fast CSV data-wrangling CLI toolkit.
• More Than a Dozen Command Line Tools I've Written—and So Can You (2018)
• Track changes to CLI tools by recording their help output (HN)
• Scout - Friendly fuzzy finder made in rust.
• fzf - Fommand-line fuzzy finder. (HN)
• Making the command line glamorous with Toby Padilla (2022)
• septum - Context-based code search tool.
• has - Checks presence of various command line tools and their versions on the path.
• Fig Manual Pages - Beautiful, community-driven documentation for 300+ CLI tools.
• csvlens - CSV file viewer in the command line.
• Difftastic - Diff tool that compares files based on their syntax. (HN)
• Goreman - Manage Procfile-based applications.
• Testing your CLI - Go package simplifies testing of command-line interfaces.
• Periscope - Gives you "duplicate vision" to help you organize and de-duplicate your files without losing data.
• Wiki CLI - View Wikipedia articles through the CLI.
• tush - Literate testing for command-line programs.
• -h --help -help help --? -? ???? (2022) (Lobsters) (HN)
• New(ish) command line tools (2022) (HN)
• ff - Find files by name, fast.
• cexec - Run commands and cache their output for a specific amount of time.
• Hoard - CLI command organizer written in rust.
• A Simple Ejectable CLI Pattern (2022)
• rush - Command-line utility that lets you run one command on many files using a simple command template syntax.
• mprocs - Runs multiple commands in parallel and shows output of each command separately.
• CLET - Command Line E2E Testing.
• climod - Modular generated command line interfaces using the same technology as the NixOS module system.
• The sort --key Trick
• UX patterns for CLI tools (2022) (Lobsters)
• forever - Simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever).
• Best practices for inclusive CLIs (2022) (Lobsters) (HN)
• tuc - When cut doesn’t cut it. (HN)
• linebyline - Command line text processor.
• Viddy - Modern watch command. Time machine and pager etc. (HN)
• cronlocker - Command line tool to allow running cronjobs on multiple hosts while ensuring that it only runs once at a time.
• pipe-rename - Rename your files using your favorite text editor.
• Backpack - Use template and starter projects easily.
• tere - Faster Alternative to cd+ls. (HN)
• bin - Manages binary files downloaded from different sources.
• catp - Print the output of a running process.
• lurk - Simple and pretty alternative to strace. Allows the user to trace system calls of a process or of a command.
• wrappe - Packer to create self-contained single-binary applications from executables and directory trees.
• Gum - Tool for glamorous shell scripts. Leverage the power of Bubbles and Lip Gloss in your scripts and aliases without writing any Go code. (Lobsters) (HN)
• Things I've learned building a modern TUI framework (2022) (HN)
• trashy - Simple, fast, and featureful alternative to rm and trash-cli written in rust.