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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern Subscriber Community Curator

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What do you Google EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. and never just memorize?

Top comments (241)

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val_baca profile image
Valentin Baca • • Edited
  • Converting Array<->List in Java*. Been coding Java for 6+ years and still don't care to learn/memorize this.
  • Objective-C block syntax

  • bash test format and flags

  • vim macro create and execute

I noticed I could never remember these, so I always make aliases, shell functions, or short ~/bin/ scripts for them instead:

  • tar: xkcd.com/1168/

  • netstat flags (other than "-tulpn" which I have memorized as "tull-pin" like "Tolkien")

  • ssh tunnel syntax

Edit: *in one-line.
Array to list:

String[] array = ...;
List<String> immutableList = Arrays.asList(array);
List<String> mutableList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(array));

List to array:

List<String> list = ...;
String[] array = list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);

Clear as mud...

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ibibgor profile image
Oscar •

Helpful protip. I learned yesterday, that list.toArray(new String[0]) is faster than the version with the explicit size given.

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lynnetye profile image
Lynne Tye •

I was about to write the same thing. How to vertically align elements... without using flex πŸ˜‚

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Sarah Chima •

Regex. While I understand how it works and how it can be used, it's difficult for me to memorize the right regex that should be used at every point. So I just google whenever I want to make use of it. :)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern •

Oh yeah that's a big one

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inozex profile image
Tiago Marques •

I was just like that... but then I've found regex101.com/ and now, I'm almost proficiente writing regex!

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gustavo •

regex101 is the single best resource I've ever found for regex.

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miffpengi profile image
Miff •

It's funny in my case. I know enough regex to get by, but I generally need to google to find out how to actually apply it.

Do I need RegExp.prototype.test or String.prototype.match in JS? What are the order of parameters in preg_match in PHP? What are the little parentheses things called in .NET, captures or groups?

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redgreenrepeat profile image
Andrew •

I had the same problem, until I found Rubular:

rubular.com/

Bonus tip: making a permalink will also save all the test cases used. Makes for an excellent inline comment!

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Kwabena Bio Berko •

Me too!
Hahaaahaa

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rogerpaviani profile image
Roger Paviani •

Same here...
BTW, I knew someone must've been written about regular expressions when I read the title.. πŸ˜‚

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jeansberg profile image
Jens Genberg •

I can never remember how it works either. I found this to be helpful, though! regexr.com/

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georgeoffley profile image
George Offley •

I always have to Google regex. Or copied old code.

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reyabreu profile image
Reynaldo Jose Abreu • • Edited

Same here. I can only remember $,,*,+ and /s /w. I always end up up googling an example and going from there.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern •

For me it's "manually start postgresql"

Every once in a while my postgres server isn't running and I know to punch that into my browser and land on this Stack Overflow question, where I proceed to copy this command into my terminal:

pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

It happens infrequently enough that I never bother to alias it or remember how to type it out. I just remember what to Google.

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galdin profile image
Galdin Raphael •

I have postgres installed via homebrew. So I use brew info postgres to copy the start command :)

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lepinekong profile image
lepinekong •

So did I then I realize how many precious minutes of my life I'm losing so I decided to buy a domain for 75 cents mycodesnippets.space :) I write things down little by little as soon as I need it the first time or I risk to never do it by lazyness !

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samxeshun profile image
Kwaku Eshun •

Oh yes, I even googled and used this today because my service keeps stopping.

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svemaraju profile image
Srikanth •

I was gonna say this. Have bookmarked the stackoverflow post on this. :D

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kaustav1996 profile image
Kaustav Banerjee •

cant you just sudo service postgresql start ? :P

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shelbyspees profile image
shelby spees (she/her) •

On Linux, yes. On OSX, no unfortunately.

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aminarria profile image
Amin Arria •

How to make a tar file...

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damian profile image
damian •

at least extracting is easy (say it in a german accent) tar -xzf "xtract ze files"

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cdw9 profile image
Chrissy Wainwright •

and -czf == 'compress ze files'

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aminspeaks profile image
Amin Mohamed Ajani •

well what works for me is tar -xzvf "xtract ze vucking files"
No kidding that's how remember it

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aminarria profile image
Amin Arria •

That's a great way! Jajajaaj

But it's important to note that tar is smart enough to detect the format so I prefer the general tar -vxf

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dean profile image
dean •

Thank you so much.

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loilo profile image
Florian Reuschel •

Even though as a German with decent English pronunciation this is a little bit insulting, I'll probably never forget this ever again. Thanks! πŸ™ˆ

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Jonas Gauffin • • Edited

Isn't that for zipped tar files? -xzf = extract zipped (tar) file.

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tbodt profile image
tbodt • • Edited

xkcd tar

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baamenabar profile image
B. AgustΓ­n AmenΓ‘bar LarraΓ­n •

I threw this one at a dev I used to work with. He answered instantly, he could have disarmed 2 bombs with that speed.

Instant respect gained

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sanjay555 profile image
Sanjayshr • • Edited

I figured out how to remember it. To create tar, use c option and for extracting replace c with x ==> $tar will remain same for both Lol :) . tar -cvf filename.tar file/dir_path && tar -xvf filename.tar.

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brandonhowkins02 • • Edited

Hey, I also want to make a tar file for my website name:Lenny face. Let me know if the given suggestions works for you!

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jacoby profile image
Dave Jacoby •

sed and awk and how to use them.

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ttiger profile image
Tony •
  • Creating SSH Keys
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kyslik profile image
Martin Kiesel •

I just ssh-k ↑ in zsh and just list all previous key generation commands or if I am not sure what I am looking for I use fzf

# fh - repeat history
fh() {
  print -z $( ([ -n "$ZSH_NAME" ] && fc -l 1 || history) | fzf +s --tac | sed 's/ *[0-9]* *//')
}
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kunde21 profile image
Chad Kunde •

I was helping someone with this earlier this year. Ended up creating a helper for it:

gist.github.com/Kunde21/3633e1e9ef...

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math2001 profile image
Mathieu PATUREL •

Suprised tldr didn't got mentioned.

It's a pretty neat tool to do this kind of things...

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imthedeveloper profile image
ImTheDeveloper •

Best link I've seen all week. Heroic!!!!!

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scottfred profile image
@ScottFred •

That's awesome! thanks

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aidanharding profile image
Aidan Harding •

Javascript array methods. Is this one in-place, or returning a new array? I don't know, but MDN does!

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

And centering things. Completely clueless every time.

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redgreenrepeat profile image
Andrew •

here's a handy multiple choice questionnaire!

howtocenterincss.com/

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theminshew profile image
Michael Minshew •

holy crap, whoever made this site needs a medal. Great recommendation!!!

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