Realiaser

Realiaser is a game which helps you memorize your shell aliases.

If you are like me, you have a lot of shell aliases but don't want to spend much time memorizing them. This gem helps remind you that you have defined an alias by telling you everytime you write a command where you should have used an alias.

I defined the point system to work as follows. +1 pt for every command executed which was executed properly. -50 for every time I forget to use an alias.

This is a pretty small library, only a two hour hack, but I've already started using more of my aliases because of the positive feedback loop it provides.

Features

Tells if you your last command should have used an alias.
Keeps track of your score.
Keeps track of your last successful command and unsuccessful command.
Doesn't modify your ENV in any way.

Installation

There are two parts to the installation. The library and integrating it with your shell.

# install the gem (sudo is optional)
sudo gem install realiaser

# the ruby script needs to be able to access aliases defined in the shell conf
alias > ~/.alias.cache

This is the hard part. You need to change your right shell prompt.

function last_command() {
  echo `history | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 3-20 | realiaser`
}

RPROMPT='%{$fg[$NCOLOR]%}%p $(last_command)%{$reset_color%}'

Check the options on your machine for "history". This configuration is for ZSH and needs slight ajusting for Bash or other configuartions

I have new aliases and it doesn't notice them.

The ruby script can't see aliases in the environment.

alias > ~/.alias.cache

Update

gem update realiaser

Questions

Q: Isn't this going to slow down my CLI?

A: Running Ruby on every command isn't ideal, but it turns out that it didn't slow me down at all.

time history -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 3-20 | /usr/bin/ruby -I~/Development/realiaser/lib ~/Development/realiaser/bin/realiaser                                          25

# Output
25

# First command
history -1  0.00s user 0.00s system 24% cpu 0.003 total

# Second command
cut -d ' ' -f 3-20  0.00s user 0.00s system 81% cpu 0.004 total

# Third command
/usr/bin/ruby -I~/Development/realiaser/lib   0.04s user 0.01s system 74% cpu 0.066 total

paulmars / realiaser

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