Unix tools, generally written in C, are an exceptionally well-designed and maintained tool set for regular day-to-day terminal usage. Although these traditional GNU and Unix amazing, they are nowadays not enough and over 40-50 years old. So those were not designed keeping the modern computers & software in their mind. We need more cool fancier and feature rich tools that save time and also make us look savage
Rust to the saving
Rust, slowly taking place into the realm of modern computing and crazy terminal space, actually has some cool and brilliant solutions for the old GNU and Unix based CLI problems. Although it might sound weird and out of the world, but surprisingly there’s a Rust based equivalent (mostly upgrade) for every single basic CLI (Command Line Interface) tools in Linux/macOS. This kind of thing unseen in the days of computing
Enough goof and trash talk (I hate myself for this), let’s see all gems now
We’ll replace all the native terminal commands with their Rust equivalent using the alias property of the shell
cd replacement - Zoxide
A smarter cd command. Supports all major shells.
It remembers which directories you use most frequently, so you can "jump" to them in just a few keystrokes.
So if you go to a directory e.g /home/batman/03842034sakdsuperrmanbadasd21/secret-identity once, the second you can just type z secret-identity it’ll directly navigate to that same directory
So let’s bury cd with zoxide. Just do:
- open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias cd=zat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
cd ./<any-directory>and live happily every after
ls replacement - Exa
exa is a modern replacement for the venerable file-listing command-line program ls that ships with Unix and Linux operating systems, giving it more features and better defaults. It uses colors to distinguish file types and metadata. It knows about symlinks, extended attributes, and Git
Now, let’s unlist ls with exa. Just do following:
- open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias ls=exa --icons --colors=alwaysat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
ls <any-directory>and live a colorful life
grep replacement - Rip grep (Dude got humor XD)
ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern. By default, ripgrep will respect gitignore rules and automatically skip hidden files/directories and binary files. In other word, RIP grep
Now, let’s execute (kill) grep and repalce with ripgrep. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias grep=rgat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - Type
grep Life <any-file>and … (are you even a human?)
cat replacement - Bat
A cat replacement with syntax highlighting and Git integration and line numbers
Cat has nine lives. The cat command has exactly 10 replacement and bat is the 10th attempt at making a better cat (character at)
Now, let's kick off the ungrateful cat and replace it with bat. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias cat=batat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
cat ./<any-file>and fly out in the night sky and sleep in the day
top repalcement - bottom🙃
Yet another cross-platform graphical process/system monitor. It’s a customizable cross-platform graphical process/system monitor for the terminal. No matter what system stats/monitor tool anyone makes/writes, it’d still be better than top
Now, let's remove top from the top and put bottom there
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias top=bottomat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
bottomand find out why Chromes taking the 99% of RAM
See kids, anyone(tool) can go from bottom to top
sed replacement - Sd
sd is an intuitive find & replace CLI and the sed butcher. sd uses regex syntax that you already know from JavaScript and Python. Forget about dealing with quirks of sed or awk - get productive immediately. It’s find & replace expressions are split up, which makes them easy to read and write. No more messing with unclosed and escaped slashes
Now, let's replace sed with sd. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias sed=sdat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - Example: type
echo 'lots((([]))) of special chars' | sed -s '((([])))' ''and you’ll get the output aslots of special chars
cloc repalcement - Tokei
Tokei is a program that displays statistics about your code. Tokei will show the number of files, total lines within those files and code, comments, and blanks grouped by language. It’s a great replacement for cloc (count lines of code)
Now, let's count cloc off and use tokei instead. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias cloc=tokeiat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
tokei ./and it’ll output 0 lines of code ‘cause you didn’t write any
find replacement - Fd
fd is a program to find entries in your file system. It is a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find. While it does not aim to support all of find's powerful functionality, it provides sensible (opinionated) defaults for a majority of use cases.
It has an intuitive syntax: fd PATTERN instead of find -iname '*PATTERN*'. Supports Regular expression (default) and glob-based patterns. Superfast due to parallelized directory traversal. Uses colors to highlight different file types (same as ls). Ignores hidden directories, files & patterns from your.gitignore, by default. AND The command name is 50% shorter than find :-)
Now, let’s forget, find and replace it with fd. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias find=fdat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
find useful-filesand forget
du repalcement - Dust
du + rust = dust. Like du but more intuitive. dust shows the disk usage more efficiently, fast and in a more organized way
Now, let's throw du to dust and replace it with dust. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias du=dustat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
duand see the reason why your disk space at 69% (I know it’s all Pokémon movies)
ps replacement - Procs
procs is a modern replacement for ps. It has colored and human-readable outputs. Supports Multi-column keyword search. Additionally, it shows TCP/UDP port, read/write throughput, docker container name, more memory information too which ps can’t show
Now, lets SIGKILL ps and replace it with procs. Just do following:
- Open
~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/~/. config/fish/config.fish - add
alias ps=procsat the end of the file and save the file - close and open the terminal or run
source <config-file-path> - type
psand to exit, pressq
bash repalcement (more like powershell) - Nushell
A new type of shell. It’s an alternative shell, quite different compared to bash, zsh or fish like terminals. Instead of thinking of files and data as raw streams of text, Nu looks at each input as something with structure. For example, when you list the contents of a directory what you get back is a table of rows, where each row represents an item in that directory. These values can be piped through a series of steps, in a series of commands called a 'pipeline'. (~ copied from the official doc)
It supports plugins which interacts with Nushell using JSON-IPC. Plugins are basically binaries available in the path and follows the nu_plugin_* naming convention
Nushell is extremely powerful and flexible and brings organization to the outputs. It structures the output in an intuitive and human-readable way. Nushell is basically the non-corporate open-source terminal, but keeping the UNIX spirit. It’s more like a PowerShell replacement. But in Linux/macOS it shines bright too. It needs more adaptation and updates and let's keep our finger crossed hoping it’ll one day become the top shell of all time
Nushell supports all major platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS). Now install it and then run chsh -s $(which nu)
Without sudo it should work. If you use sudo it will change the shell not for your working user but for root. Finally, log out of your computer and log back in.
What? You want more?
All the configurations at once for replacing the GNU/Unix tools. Put this on ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc etc shell configuration files and restart your Terminal
alias cd=z
alias ls=exa --icons --colors=always
alias cat=bat
alias find=fd
alias grep=rg
alias du=dust
alias sed=sd
alias cloc=tokei
alias ps=procs
Well, you can always support me for more 😊
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Top comments (2)
nice tools selection. Bottom is new for me .
thanks
Thank you for the consistently valuable information.
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