Show HN: Empty Enter Expander – Type less in the terminal with this tool

I've been using https://github.com/denisidoro/navi for this kind of scenario.

Aliases as a feature are meant to save you typing in the first place.

The more you use aliases, the more you save in typing, over time.

If you can't remember a particular alias, that means you have a use for it very rarely (spaced repetition and all that), and the benefit of having it around is very low anyway.

I generally try to prune my bashrc from aliases that turned out not as useful as I thought. I have about 50 atm, and don't feel the need for a helper tool.

Maybe if one's aliases skew towards a particular pattern this tool could be useful, I don't know.

Tbh having tons of aliases always messes me up, half the time I forget them and just end up typing full commands anyway lol

Fish shell has abbreviations, which expand into the full command, support regex patterns, and can expand arguments to a different command

https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/abbr.html#examples

> When you have a lot of aliases it can be difficult to remember how was the one you need named especially if you do not use it very often.

I use tmux and I use this small keybind to launch a place where I can search my aliases: bind-key a run-shell 'tmux neww -n "aliases" "source ~/.zshrc && alias | fzf"'

I like this workflow because it's quick. I always thought that if I want to shorten something I will just make and learn and alias for it and that's it.

That's a fantastic idea! I've made it a bit simpler for myself — basically just `source file`, so that I don't need to press enter to execute it, but also added one cute detail in the loop:

    if [[ -f "$target/.exec" ]]; then
        zsh "$target/.exec"
    fi

I don't know about anyone else, but when transitioning back to a shell, I HAVE to hit a bunch of enters on any prompt to clear the last output away a few lines before I can summon up the powers to enter a new command - blow away the cobwebs and all that. I love the empty enter command line :)

I think there are a lot of different takes on this. Mine uses playbooks, if you are interested https://github.com/laktak/tome

Is it possible to trigger the expander differently?

I already have zsh-magic-dashboard running on empty enter.