Coolest terminal usage.
Neat things possible in a terminal window on os X.
- Multiple tabbed terminal windows gets real productive real fast. I usually run a three tab setup, with different visual settings (Shell->New Window-><listed>)
. One tab for my login on the local machine, a second tab for ssh login to remote machine, a third tab for admin login into the local machine. The distinct visual backgrounds keep it clear in my head who I am and on which machine. Cut and paste is possible between windows, or even from/to the gui. Linux and BSD may be able to do this by now, but it was a true revelation in productivity when I first discovered how to do this in OS X. Cntrl-T to add a tab, Cntrl-N to pop a new terminal. Save your entire setup as a group, save custom settings as default, endless customization options. Where do you think os X developers spend most of their time? No surprise the terminal.app is so productive and useful.
-
Save the entire terminal session out to text file.
Apple-s like any other app. It saves the entire historical contents of the active terminal session to a text file, prompting for filename. Now you know what you did all day! - Drag a file into a terminal window, the full system path and filename are inserted as text.
- For unix geeks only, use multiple windows and command history to quickly string together an impromptu workflow or test a new script with various options.
- /usr/bin/osascript -e 'say "Hello old friend!" using "Alex"', paste into a terminal window and hit enter
- Tap the up arrow and hit enter again to repeat. Try Zarvox and Trinoids in place of Alex. A Pogue hint.
-
Another Missing Manual trick. Run a therapy session from emacs on os X.
at a terminal prompt type emacs
then shift-esc
then xdoctor
then control-z when therapy is over
