The traditional Unix toolbox is full of utilities for text manipulation.
What about problems that are not text manipulation? The trick to being productive from a command line is to turn problems into text manipulation problems. The output of a shell command is text. Programs are text. Once you get into the necessary mindset, everything is text. This may not be the most efficient approach to a given problem, but it’s a possible strategy.
The hard part on the path to becoming a command line wizard, or any kind of wizard, is thinking about how to apply existing tools to your particular problems.
You get faster at anything with repetition…One way to become more productive is to split semi-repetitive tasks into more creative and more repetitive parts.
- The hard part in becoming a command line wizard • John D. Cook 📖