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CLI Tricks: n - note taking
March 21st, 2018
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This is the first in a series of phlog entries where I will share
some of my command line tricks, tips and scripts.
## n ##
Note-taking in the terminal is a big deal for me. Whether I'm in
a meeting or someone stops by for a quick interruption, I need to
be able to jot down notes quickly and get at them again easily. To
handle this I have built a helper function called "n".
Note: If you are familiar with my dotfiles [0] then you know
I keep all these scripts in a folder called ~/.functions and
source them as part of my .bash_profile.
### The Idea ###
When I'm on the command line I enter the command "n" and it pops
up a list of all my notes using the FZF [1] fuzzy finder. These
have a nice preview window to the side so I can quickly scan what
I'm looking for as I type in parts of the name. If I see what
I need in the preview I can either hit ESC to quit back to my
shell or ENTER to open up the note in my EDITOR.
Creating a new note is easy:
$ n monkeys
> creates a new note in my NOTE_DIR called monkeys.md (I default
> all my notes to markdown) and opens it in EDITOR
Want to categorize them? Add a folder path:
$ n animals/monkeys
> creates a new note at $NOTE_DIR/animals/monkeys.md and opens
> it in EDITOR
You can search foldernames as part of the fuzzy-finding.
The script also has bash-completion built-in. If you don't want to
use FZF to browse for the file, just type part of the word and hit
tab, like so:
$ n mo<TAB>
> n monkeys<ENTER>
### Requirements ###
This requires FZF [1], a fantastic utility for fuzzy-finding. I'm
sure you could port it to another tool if you really wanted,
though.
This also requires that you have an environment variable set
called NOTE_DIR. For me that points to Dropbox where I have a
notes folder. This means all my notes are generated and stored
there and are shared across systems. I can even get at them
with my phone.
### The Source ###
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Note taking function and command completion
_n() {
local lis cur
lis=$(find "${NOTE_DIR}" -name "*.md" | \
sed -e "s|${NOTE_DIR}/||" | \
sed -e 's/\.md$//')
cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$lis" -- "$cur") )
}
n() {
: "${NOTE_DIR:?'NOTE_DIR ENV Var not set'}"
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
local file
file=$(find "${NOTE_DIR}" -name "*.md" | \
sed -e "s|${NOTE_DIR}/||" | \
sed -e 's/\.md$//' | \
fzf \
--multi \
--select-1 \
--exit-0 \
--preview="cat ${NOTE_DIR}/{}.md" \
--preview-window=right:70%:wrap)
[[ -n $file ]] && \
${EDITOR:-vim} "${NOTE_DIR}/${file}.md"
else
case "$1" in
"-d")
rm "${NOTE_DIR}"/"$2".md
;;
*)
${EDITOR:-vim} "${NOTE_DIR}"/"$*".md
;;
esac
fi
}
complete -F _n n
[0] tomasino's dotfiles
[1] FZF
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