A list of new(ish) command line tools – Julia Evans

1. lnav

   1 85 8,630 9.9 C++

   Log file navigator

   

   https://lnav.org/2021/05/03/tailing-remote-files.html

   As for integrating with a “genders” host DB, there’s no direct support for it. But, lnav is scriptable, so I’m pretty sure it’s possible to write a script that does what you want. I can help with that if post in the github discussion: https://github.com/tstack/lnav/discussions

2. CodeRabbit

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3. glow

   2 68 17,636 8.8 Go

   Render markdown on the CLI, with pizzazz! 💅🏻

   

   A new fave I recently discovered - render markdown in the terminal for easy reading (and proofing):

   https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

4. mdp

   3 10 5,046 4.1 C

   A command-line based markdown presentation tool.

   

   > I recently found out about mdp too, a way to display markdown in the terminal as slides.

   > https://github.com/visit1985/mdp

   I use pandoc to convert markdown to powerpoint decks, it's a great workflow as you can preview and tweak the content and then apply the firm theme before the presentation.

5. up

   4 28 8,472 0.0 Go

   Ultimate Plumber is a tool for writing Linux pipes with instant live preview (by akavel)

   

   As an alternative allowing the use of any shell command/pipeline on the results interactively, see also: https://github.com/akavel/up

6. dive

   5 94 50,358 3.4 Go

   A tool for exploring each layer in a docker image

   

   Awesome, thanks for that! It has a bunch of useful stuff merged, but it's still missing the export tree view feature (https://github.com/wagoodman/dive/pull/324), which can be handy.

7. hexyl

   6 18 9,558 6.7 Rust

   A command-line hex viewer

   

   No such list is complete without hexyl!

   https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl

8. jo

   7 16 4,727 2.6 C

   JSON output from a shell

   

   I'm a big fan of jo[1] for making generating JSON from the shell not terrible.

   [1] https://github.com/jpmens/jo

9. InfluxDB

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   InfluxDB high-performance time series database. Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-resolution data to power real-time intelligent systems.

   

10. fx

    8 6 18 0.0 C++

    Discontinued fx is a workspace tool manager. It allows you to create consistent, discoverable, language-neutral and developer friendly command line tools. (by jathu)

    Shameless plug for my own tool, fx: a simple CLI tool for making consistent CLI tools in large repositories: https://github.com/jathu/fx

11. pcstat

    9 2 1,262 0.0 Go

    Page Cache stat: get page cache stats for files on Linux

    

    pcstat and vmtouch (page cache statistics and control)

    https://github.com/tobert/pcstat

12. vmtouch

    10 9 1,844 2.8 C

    Portable file system cache diagnostics and control

    

13. git-crypt

    11 54 8,787 2.6 C++

    Transparent file encryption in git

    

    Combine that with git-crypt[0] (obviously, don't commit secrets in plaintext to your repo!) for example and you have some really nice ergonomics.

    Not enough people know about direnv.

    [0]: https://www.agwa.name/projects/git-crypt/

14. Spruce

    12 3 436 4.1 Go

    A BOSH template merge tool (by geofffranks)

    

    I use spruce for many thing but it's ability to merge y'all files smartly is very useful. Think global yaml merged with one of [prod, staging, dev].yaml, merged with override.yaml creating a deployment yaml. https://github.com/geofffranks/spruce

15. ripgrep

    13 364 51,741 7.6 Rust

    ripgrep recursively searches directories for a regex pattern while respecting your gitignore

    

    There's a ripgrep ticket for multiple patterns. No one seems to have come up with a good specification for exactly how it ought to work, so no development has started.

    https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/875

16. nnn

    14 202 19,965 8.6 C

    n³ The unorthodox terminal file manager

    

    I’m a fan of nnn for a terminal file manager, so I’m keen to try out broot. Does anyone have other recommendations I should try?

    https://github.com/jarun/nnn

17. pwru

    15 9 3,266 9.1 C

    Packet, where are you? -- eBPF-based Linux kernel networking debugger

    

    [pwru](https://github.com/cilium/pwru) is a fun new tool from the Cilium folks for tracing network packets in the kernel. Like tcpdump but it shows you the full path including kernel syscalls. Lets you debug much deeper than "when the packet gets to this port it gets dropped".

18. ranger

    16 168 16,079 8.0 Python

    A VIM-inspired filemanager for the console

    

19. xplr

    17 105 4,355 6.5 Rust

    A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer

    

    Another nnn fan here, great tool!

    Been meaning to try out xplr[1] which I came across the other day.

    1 https://github.com/sayanarijit/xplr

20. angle-grinder

    18 11 3,573 5.2 Rust

    Slice and dice logs on the command line

    

21. Hoppscotch

    19 235 71,199 9.7 TypeScript

    Open source API development ecosystem.

    

    I found https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch recently and it's quite nice. There's also a VSCode extension that doesn't look like it's actively developed any more: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.v...

22. consult

    20 93 1,371 9.4 Emacs Lisp

    :mag: consult.el - Consulting completing-read

    

    I do things like that inside Emacs with the consult-grep command from the Consult package, combined with the Orderless matching style.

    1. Consult: https://github.com/minad/consult/

23. orderless

    21 33 860 6.0 Emacs Lisp

    Emacs completion style that matches multiple regexps in any order

    

24. htmlq

    22 28 7,284 0.0 Rust

    Like jq, but for HTML.

    

25. Newman

    23 343 7,002 7.3 JavaScript

    Newman is a command-line collection runner for Postman

    

    There is a cli tool to run postman collections: https://github.com/postmanlabs/newman

    You still have to create the collections in Postman, however.

26. lf

    24 115 8,118 8.7 Go

    Terminal file manager

    

    Related to ranger, nowadays I use lf[0], which is a clone of ranger written in Go. There's also pistol[1] which is a replacement for ranger's rifle file viewer

    [0] https://github.com/gokcehan/lf

27. pistol

    25 3 329 8.1 Go

    General purpose file previewer designed for Ranger, Lf to make scope.sh redundant

    

28. f2

    26 22 920 8.8 Go

    F2 is a cross-platform command-line tool for batch renaming files and directories quickly and safely. Written in Go!

    

    Missing from this list is f2 (golang), one of my happiest finds of recent memory:

    https://github.com/ayoisaiah/f2

29. pup

    27 52 8,235 0.0 HTML

    Parsing HTML at the command line

    

    I use pup for this. People who tried both, any difference?

    https://github.com/EricChiang/pup

30. eureka

    28 2 133 0.0 Go

    Need to encrypt a file before sending it to someone? This is it. (by mimoo)

    

31. dysk

    29 6 954 6.4 Rust

    A linux utility to get information on filesystems, like df but better

    

32. hurl

    30 64 14,536 9.9 Rust

    Hurl, run and test HTTP requests with plain text.

    

33. skim

    31 30 5,607 9.5 Rust

    Fuzzy Finder in rust!

    

    I use skim / `sk` for this kind of task: https://github.com/lotabout/skim . For example, for iterating on jq incantations, I have in my shell rc file:

      function jqsk {

34. pipe-rename

    32 9 403 4.2 Rust

    Rename your files using your favorite text editor

    

    I really like the approach of pipe-rename (https://github.com/marcusbuffett/pipe-rename) for renaming many files. It's especially convenient for people who can efficiently edit many files in their favorite text editor (so everybody here, I guess).

    Main problem: you maybe don't do this kind of operation frequently enough to remember how it's called or how you aliased it.

35. fselect

    33 14 4,163 8.6 Rust

    Find files with SQL-like queries

    

    Shameless plug: a tool I wrote to manage downloads directory :)

    https://github.com/jhspetersson/fselect

36. runiq

    34 2 215 5.8 Rust

    An efficient way to filter duplicate lines from input, à la uniq.

    

    A-ha! I knew I had one more.

    How many times have you wanted to dedup a (text) file, but definitely didn't have enough memory to perform the task? I found this one day when I had to dedup a set of .ndjson.gz files which totaled a cumulative 312 GBs. Utilizing the bloomfilter option, I was able to dedup the records without any large investment on my part.

    Anyways, runiq[1], "[an] efficient way to filter duplicate lines from input, à la uniq".

    It provides several ways to filter of which I almost always default to utilizing the bloomfilter implementation (`-f bloom`).

    ---

    [1] https://github.com/whitfin/runiq

    [2] https://whitfin.io/filtering-unique-logs-using-rust/

37. tig

    35 64 12,676 7.5 C

    Text-mode interface for git

    

    Another entry in such a list might be tig (https://jonas.github.io/tig/), which is an adjunct to various git commands.

38. wat

    36 2 16 3.6 Go

    Which Alias To...? (by nmaggioni)

    

    Some time ago I have in fact written a small utility based on fzf that solves this problem by letting you comment aliases in your shell config file and fuzzy-search through them:

    https://github.com/nmaggioni/wat - Which Alias To...?

    The tag system is especially useful to me when I know the general concept I'm after but don't remember the exact wording of the command.

39. rags

    37 1 9 10.0 Rust

    Rust Alias Generator for Shells (by max-heller)

    

    Doesn't recommend tools, but rags[0] will look through your history to recommend aliases.

    https://github.com/max-heller/rags

40. jq

    38 306 25,063 0.0 C

    Discontinued Command-line JSON processor [Moved to: https://github.com/jqlang/jq] (by stedolan)

    

41. ffsend

    39 27 7,091 5.1 Rust

    :mailbox_with_mail: Easily and securely share files from the command line. A fully featured Firefox Send client.

    

    Some might find `ffsend` useful to securely share files from your command line:

    https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend

42. AdventOfCode

    40 1 0 0.0

    

    Oh, don’t worry, I am familiar[1] with it! It doesn’t quite do this one thing as well as jo, so I like using both.

    [1] https://github.com/flurie/AdventOfCode/blob/main/2021/jq/d14... - unfortunately, this is the point at which I realized the stdlib was a little too anemic for general purpose solving and gave up

43. less

    41 3 607 9.3 C

    Less - text pager

    

    Oh wow, that's a pretty new feature! It was added in v569, 2020[1].

    [1]: https://github.com/gwsw/less/commit/6a070fc53799fb86e0fe3880...

44. Simplest-File-Renamer

    42 6 104 3.7 TypeScript

    Simplest file renamer - rename your files quickly and easily

    

    OMG! I created a GUI tool for this: Simplest File Renamer (Win, Mac, Linux).

    In my app, you can rename using your favorite code editor, so you have access to all your keyboard shortcuts.

    https://github.com/whyboris/Simplest-File-Renamer - MIT open source

45. dyff

    43 6 1,464 8.8 Go

    /ˈdʏf/ - diff tool for YAML files, and sometimes JSON

    

46. mitmproxy

    44 165 38,725 9.7 Python

    An interactive TLS-capable intercepting HTTP proxy for penetration testers and software developers.

    

47. dive

    45 1 57 8.7 Go

    A tool for exploring each layer in a docker image (by jauderho)

    

48. navi

    46 52 15,675 8.5 Rust

    An interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line

    

    I have found https://github.com/denisidoro/navi very useful for remembering nifty one-liners.

    It's like a bookmark manager for commands.

    Also good for sharing them with the rest of your team, via a git repo.

49. dateutils

    47 4 625 6.5 C

    nifty command line date and time utilities; fast date calculations and conversion in the shell

    

    A little late to the party, but if you ever need to do basily anything with dates, check out dateutils (https://github.com/hroptatyr/dateutils).

50. detox

    48 10 376 6.5 C

    Tames problematic filenames (by dharple)

    

    I'd like to mention two tools that I love and use:

    1. detox -- for sanitising filenames, https://github.com/dharple/detox

51. mtm

    49 8 1,134 0.0 C

    Perhaps the smallest useful terminal multiplexer in the world.

    

52. SaaSHub

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