It's 2022, let's have our CLIs reflect that
I came across an interesting article about some of the more common Unix CLI tools being rewritten in Rust and given a lick of new paint. I had been using some of these tools before reading the article and I have definitely noticed the benefits they have over the traditional implementations.
bat
bat is a replacement for cat but with some neat additions such as
- syntax highlighting
- git integration (additions and deletions)
- the output format is conditional, e.g. if the height of the output is greater than your terminal height then it will be piped into
less
fd
Not much to say about fd, it’s a replacement for find but without the clunky syntax. Instead of having to use find -iname ‘*PATTERN*’, now it’s as simple as fd PATTERN.
Another neat addition is that fd respects your .gitignore file, so it doesn’t waste time combing through your node_modules.
tealdeer
I haven’t specifically used tealdeer, but any tool that aims to improve the wonderful tldr is great in my book.
Read the full article for more modern CLI rewrites.