Hi again,
So will you accept a patch with adding the * as a basename replacement for
DEST in cp and mv?
And speaking about the second usability problem about creation of a non
existing DEST directory.
There is install command which makes exactly this but also support setting
owner:
-D create all leading components of DEST except the last, or
all
components of --target-directory, then copy SOURCE to DEST
-g, --group=GROUP
set group ownership, instead of process' current group
-m, --mode=MODE
set permission mode (as in chmod), instead of rwxr-xr-x
-o, --owner=OWNER
set ownership (super-user only)
It's great and actually looks like this command is just an extension of cp.
But while the cp is well known the install command is used rarely. I never
looked into it and never saw its man. I guess many users too.
What if we just merge these two commands? That will simplify things.
It looks like there are two conflicting options -d -s so we can't just make a
symlink to cp but anyway it's easy to just wrap the cp.
Will you consider a patch with the change?
This two additions while being relatively small will make more effective
interacting with command line and writing scripts.
On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 8:19 PM Sergey Ponomarev <stok...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Workaround: use Brace Expansion:
> mv /tmp/{file1,.bak}
> or
> mv /tmp/{file1,.bak}
>
> It wasn't intuitive, that's why I didn't figure it out in the first place.
> Autocomplete doesn't work, but this is a bash issue.
>
> Still, the placeholder would be kind of more clear but it's an additional
> feature so you probably WONTFIX it.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 7:23 PM Sergey Ponomarev <stok...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thank you for the fast response. Nice tricks, didn't know about the
>> direxpand. Probably most regular users don't know either :(
>> As you may see, even with a workaround this usability can be improved.
>> So what about having the simple solution in place?
>> 1. Use placeholder like asterisk to refer the source dir inside of the
>> dest dir
>> 2. Use -F arg to create directory if not exists
>>
>> Have a nice weekend
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 6:44 PM Glenn Golden <g...@zplane.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 1, 2023, at 09:03, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
>>> > On 7/1/23 14:12, Sergey Ponomarev wrote:
>>> > > To rename a file a user need to use mv command and specify the DEST
>>> dir:
>>> > >
>>> > > mv /some/very/long/path/file /some/very/long/path/
>>> > >
>>> > > This makes it not so easy to use when typing a command but also
>>> makes a
>>> > > script line longer.
>>> >
>>> > Assuming you meant
>>> >
>>> > $ mv /some/very/long/path/file /some/very/long/path/file2
>>> >
>>> > as in the other example - this could be done with:
>>> >
>>> > $ cd /some/very/long/path && mv file file2
>>> >
>>> > or (with GNU coreutils' env):
>>> >
>>> > $ env -C /some/very/long/path mv file file2
>>> >
>>> > Have a nice day,
>>> > Berny
>>>
>>> If you use bash and if your long paths are consistent (i.e. often
>>> referring
>>> to the same source or destination each time) then another approach is to
>>> just
>>> enable the bash 'direxpand' option, define some short envars in your
>>> .bash_profile or .bashrc, and use those to facilitate commandline (and
>>> script) operations, e.g.
>>>
>>> export p1=/long/path/to/some/frequently/accessed/directory
>>> export p2=/another/long/path/to/a/frequently/accessed/directory
>>>
>>> Then, for cmdline ops, just typing
>>>
>>> $ mv $a/<tab>
>>>
>>> immediately expands $a (inline on the commandline) to
>>>
>>> $ mv /long/path/to/some/frequently/accessed/directory/
>>>
>>> and you can then tack on "$b" (or any other destination).
>>>
>>> The 'direxpand' option provides nice immediate feedback that the envar
>>> you
>>> selected is the correct one (among, presumably, several 1-letter envars
>>> you've defined like this for various long paths of interest.)
>>>
>>> I use this approach frequently in my own workflow when dealing with
>>> annoyingly long but consistent paths.
>>>
>>> Glenn
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Sergey Ponomarev <https://linkedin.com/in/stokito>,
>> stokito.com
>>
>
>
> --
> Sergey Ponomarev <https://linkedin.com/in/stokito>,
> stokito.com
>
--
Sergey Ponomarev <https://linkedin.com/in/stokito>,
stokito.com
