mika’s advent calendar – day 20: lazy typing
I blogged about some tips for optimizing the workflow on the command line in my advent calendar already (like irssi backlog completion, Zsh keybindings and hashes in the zsh). When optimizing your workflow you should be aware of what exactly is eating up your time.
Start with evaluating your top 10 shell commands, in Zsh (what else should you be using?) by running:
print -l -- ${(o)history%% *} | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10
Then consider creating aliases for the most commonly used commands. I for example use ‘s’ for ssh, ‘g’ for git, ‘S’ for GNU Screen,… (stuff provided in grml’s default Zsh config btw). Of course you should also make sure to use according mappings and abbreviations in other tools as well. Vim for example supports iab and imap. Several browsers support searching by keyword.
Disclaimer: It’s definitely OK if you aren’t interested in optimising every single step of your tools. But don’t waste your own time with stuff that annoys you.