Terminal

Rsync is an amazing utility to copy (or sync) stuff from one place to another without having to worry about the command getting cut. With a plain cp, an interrupted transfer means starting over from scratch. Rsync compares source and destination, skipping files that are already there, and with --partial it can even resume a file that was only halfway through. It can also remember ownership and permissions, and even copy over ssh. That is, with the right flags, which I can never remember. Hence this post. ...

I’m used to formatting disks on Linux with GParted, but unfortunately there’s no version for MacOS. They offer some sort of bootable image, but that sounded like a hassle. Luckily it turns out MacOS has a built-in tool. Usage is simple. I wanted to format a drive to ExFat, and all it takes is: 1 diskutil list To list the drives on your system and find the name of the one you want to format. Then: ...

Typing takes time. Typing without typos is an art. Fixing mistakes in a terminal command is a pain in the neck. Luckily there’s such a thing as aliases. An alias lets you set a keyword and a command it should expand to. For example, I have set a super simple one, which is widely used: alias ..='cd ..'. This allows me to write .. in terminal and it will act like cd .., saving me typing a c, a d and a space, followed by two dots. This seems minor, but when you imagine how often I need to go up a directory in terminal, it’s a huge timesaver. ...