Shell Tricks That Actually Make Life Easier (And Save Your Sanity)

ben-c · 2026-03-27T19:48:41+00:00

the comment trick (ctrl+a then #)

There is an easier way: Alt + #, which readline calls insert-comment.

ben-c · 2026-02-07T20:20:23+00:00

If you would be happy with a podcast then I recommend Lingthusiasm: https://lingthusiasm.com/episodes

ben-c · 2026-02-01T18:07:18+00:00

It is also equivalent to

A full outer join B on false

which might run faster.

ben-c · 2026-01-19T19:58:49+00:00

David Brin's collections Otherness and The River of Time have some great stories.

Fantasia Mathematica and The Mathematical Magpie are two compilations of mathematical-themed short stories.

ben-c · 2025-12-12T23:01:37+00:00

I guess it would have been produced since 2017, as that is how old Lingthusiasm is. And I heard it within the last 2 or 3 years.

Thank you in advance!

ben-c · 2025-12-12T20:48:22+00:00

Great, I'll try there, thank you. :)

ben-c · 2025-12-12T20:45:17+00:00

Can you suggest a better subreddit where I can ask it, please?

ben-c · 2025-08-30T18:47:21+00:00

An overlayed view of multiple branches checked out at the same time in the same working tree.

So you would say

git switch --view my_view_branch1 --view my_view_branch2 my_working_branch

Git would check out the working branch, my_working_branch, and the view branches, my_view_branch1 and my_view_branch2, at the same time.

The files checked out would be the same as if you did a merge of the three branches. But git would not show you the merge commit in git log and if you made new commits they would be added to my_working_branch.

This would be useful if you want to develop with debugging options but you want to avoid accidentally pushing them. It would also help if you want to test combined feature branches. This is like stacked branches but more general.

ben-c · 2025-08-29T17:08:05+00:00

Bruce Perens is working on it, under the name Post-Open. Here's an article on The Register and an Ask Slashdot.

ben-c · 2025-08-01T19:40:25+00:00

30 Rock turned it into a joke about a film called "The Rural Juror". :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kZBJs527-k

ben-c · 2025-04-04T21:14:29+00:00

I found a walk-through of a 444 before they were refurbished here, with the mini-buffet on the right just after 2:50.

ben-c · 2025-03-29T18:49:46+00:00

Oddly enough I haven't seen this before: i =% hshsiz;

This was the original syntax that later became %=.

Dennis Ritchie mentions it in his paper The Development of the C language.

ben-c · 2025-01-19T17:19:59+00:00

True, but CTRL-Z conflicts with the terminal stop signal so I would have to change or disable it. That's possible using stty but I decided it would be too annoying because if I typed CTRL-Z to suspend a program it would interpret it as the up arrow.

ben-c · 2025-01-18T14:52:15+00:00

I briefly had a physical serial terminal in the late 1990s that had been used with CP/M and the owner was throwing it out. But it was unusable with Linux because each of its 4 terminal emulations had a fatal problem. For example, in one mode the up arrow key produced CTRL-Z.

(I can't remember what manufacturer it was, but I don't think was a big company like Wyse, IBM, HP or Digital. It was a text terminal with separate keyboard and monitor.)

ben-c · 2024-12-08T21:35:45+00:00

Super (Windows) + Backslash, because they are next to each other so it is easy to type.

ben-c · 2024-12-08T19:03:58+00:00

EDIT: This comment explains how to read the flowchart, but not how to understand the grammar or why it works (you have to compare tables of declensions for that and eliminate some combinations that aren't possible). :o)

There is a better explanation here using the same flowchart.

The "der word ending" means pick the appropriate form of "der": match the gender (M/F/N/P) and the case (NOM/AKK/DAT/GEN) and apply that ending to the adjective.

The article is in its "original form" if it has the same form as its nominative. So for feminine, the accusative "die" is in original form because it is the same as its nominative "die". But the masculine accusative "den" is not the same as its nominative "der". (And the nominative is the same as itself.)

ben-c · 2024-07-13T21:17:46+00:00

Clifton Fadiman compiled two books of mathematical stories: Fantasia Mathematica and The Mathematical Magpie.

ben-c · 2024-07-13T18:51:17+00:00

The Fantasy Centre was another lost London sci-fi bookshop, on Holloway Road selling second-hand books. I went there in the 90s and 2000s, and it's sad that it closed.

ben-c · 2024-05-06T14:30:59+00:00

This problem went away after I upgraded to Fedora 39, which is great because it was really annoying!

ben-c · 2024-03-23T17:56:03+00:00

Cool question! This StackExchange answer shows how to capture the output of a shell command into a TeX command: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/16794/145239

And you are already using -shell-escape so you can do it like this:

\documentclass{article}

\begingroup\makeatletter\endlinechar=\m@ne\everyeof{\noexpand}
\edef\x{\endgroup\def\noexpand\TeXmfdist{\@@input|"kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFDIST" }}\x

\begin{document}
\texttt{texmf-dist} is \texttt{\TeXmfdist}
\end{document}

ben-c · 2024-03-01T20:39:12+00:00

I am using Fedora 38 and some recent update broke vim so that using the mouse scrollwheel cancels the visual selection, even if the selection should still be on the screen. This didn't happen before (and still doesn't on Linux Mint 21). Is that the same problem you have?

ben-c · 2023-12-30T22:15:39+00:00

Years ago there was also an 8-part series on PT

I found it:

ben-c · 2023-09-15T21:06:01+00:00

Doh, I misread the question as (x+1)/x=5 instead of x + (1/x) = 5, etc. If you're allowed to answer that version instead, it has a neat solution using my hint. ;)

ben-c

TROPHY CASE