I don't know if you've used sqsh before. But it has a handy feature that allows you to switch into vim to complete editing of whatever complicated SQL statement you are trying to run. But I got to thinking -- why doesn't bash have that? Well, it does. It's called '|'! Jk. Seriously, I'm pretty sure this flow of commands will revolutionize how I administer files. And b/c everything is a file on *nx based distros, well, it's handy. First, if your ls is aliased to ls --color=auto, then create another alias in your .bashrc: alias lsp='ls --color=none' Now, let's say you want to rename all files that begin with the prefix 'ras' to files that begin with a 'raster' prefix. You could do it with some bash substitution. But who remembers that? I remember vim macros because I can remember to press 'qa' and how to move around in vim. Plus, it's more incremental. You can check things along the way. That is the secret to development and probably the universe. So type something like: lsp | grep ras Are those all the files you need to move? If not, modify and re-grep. If so, pipe it to vim. lsp | grep ras | vim - Now run your vim macros to modify the first line. Assuming you use 'w' and 'b' to move around, etc., it should work for all lines. Hold down '@@', etc., until your list of files has been modified from ras_a.h ras_a.cpp ras_b.h ras_b.cpp to: mv ras_a.h raster_a.h mv ras_a.cpp raster_a.cpp mv ras_b.h raster_b.h mv ras_b.h raster_b.cpp then run :%!bash then run :q! then be like, whaaaaa? as you realize your workflow got a little more continuous. maybe. YMMV.
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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