p is for pager

p() { l=$LINES; case $1 in do) shift; IFS=$'\n' _pg=( $("$@") ) && _pgn=0 && p r;; r) echo "${_pg[*]:_pgn:$((l-4))}";; d) (( _pgn+=l-4 )); (( _pgn=_pgn>=${#_pg[@]}?${#_pg[@]}-l+4:_pgn )); p r;; u) (( _pgn=_pgn<=l-4?0:_pgn-$l-4 )); p r;; esac; }

Manpages, command summaries, and pretty much everything else usually have the information you're most likely to want at the beginning. Seeing just the last 40 or so lines of options from a command that has 100 is not super useful, and having to scroll up each time you want to glance at something is spastic. Run this and then do something like p do vi --help and you'll get the first screen(-mostly-)full of vi's usage info and options list Then use p d to page down, and p u to page up. To see the current page again: p r Also useful for situations like p do aptitude search ~dsmorgasbord p next #p sudo aptitude -r install libwickedawesome-perl-snoochieboochies p next p sudo aptitude -r install libwickedawesome-perl-snoochieboochies snazztasticorama-dev-v0.∞ where you're using readline up-arrow, HOME, END, etc., to quickly recall commented commands. For the unaware, that option to aptitude search will bring up all of the packages whose descriptions contain the string "smorgasbord". Depending on your distro, there could potentially be hundreds of them.

By: intuited

2009-12-18 23:35:53

echo bash pager

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What Others Think

hmm, it didn't like my multiline command sequence. Presto! p do aptitude search ~dsmorgasbord p next #p sudo aptitude -r install libwickedawesome-perl-snoochieboochies p next p sudo aptitude -r install libwickedawesome-perl-snoochieboochies snazztasticorama-dev-v0.∞

intuited · 747 weeks and 6 days ago

Neat, but what does this do that something like vi --help | less doesn't? When I use less, I get fwd/reverse search, and I can background it and come back later.

bwoodacre · 747 weeks and 6 days ago

Mostly it's just the convenience of being able to type and see the documentation without having to use some sort of toggling mechanism ? (back/fore)grounding a task, switching to another tab in a multitab terminal app, etc. Mostly it's for situations where you would just type APP --help, except that APP --help spoots out 400 lines of options. I got industrious and added some features, like perl regex searching and a hookin to elinks... let me know and I'll gist it or something if somebody is interested.

intuited · 747 weeks and 5 days ago

Talia55 · 115 weeks and 2 days ago

seofox · 115 weeks and 1 day ago

seofox · 114 weeks and 5 days ago

seofox · 114 weeks and 2 days ago

rahimhh21 · 84 weeks and 6 days ago

Perfecthomepugs · 76 weeks and 3 days ago

pugpuppies95 · 38 weeks and 3 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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