Fish shell abbreviations is a godsend

[u/SandvikDude]

Hi!

After my migration from Windows to Linux two or so months ago, I've been trying to learn how to use the terminal and be somewhat efficient and know about the basic functions like rm, mv, cp, ls, ln and such.
I've known about terminal aliases a while, but I found out about abbreviations on Fish yesterday and I absolutely love that feature.

Got any suggestions on other abbreviations/aliases I should use, or even other QoL features that I might not know about? Happy to learn!

[u/Dist__]

what's the difference with alias?

[u/AiwendilH → u/Dist__]

Fish abbreviations get replaced with the text while you still type the input...so for example if you type ls .dots<space> the .dots get replaced by "/home/simon/dots" the moment you press <space>.

This makes it more useful to abbreviate parts that are reoccurring in the middle of long command lines..like for example abbreviating | sort -ih to quickly add case-insensitive and human number sorting in the middle of a command chain.

[u/AnsibleAnswers → u/Dist__]

abbr changes the text on screen to the configured string. You can also place the cursor anywhere in the expanded text with --set-cursor, define where an abbr gets expanded with --position, and set an abbr to be command-specific with --command.

[u/Dist__ → u/AnsibleAnswers]

i see. it's for people who use terminal a lot

[u/xplosm → u/Dist__]

Like… you know… every interactive shell

[u/Dist__ → u/xplosm]

yeah, but once in week i'm ok to type it, or there's ctrl+R

and if i had to use it every day, this feature might be handy