howdoi

howdoi Instant coding answers via the command line ⚡ Never open your browser to look for help again ⚡ Introduction to howdoi Are you a hack programmer? Do you find yourself constantly Googling for how to do basic programming tasks? Suppose you want to know how to format a date in bash. Why open your browser and read through blogs (risking major distraction) when you can simply stay in the console and ask howdoi: $ howdoi format date bash > DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d` howdoi will answer all sorts of queries: $ howdoi print stack trace python > import traceback > > try: > 1/0 > except: > print '>>> traceback <<<' > traceback.print_exc() > print '>>> end of traceback <<<' > traceback.print_exc() $ howdoi convert mp4 to animated gif > video=/path/to/video.avi > outdir=/path/to/output.gif > mplayer "$video" \ > -ao null \ > -ss "00:01:00" \ # starting point > -endpos 10 \ # duration in second > -vo gif89a:fps=13:output=$outdir \ > -vf scale=240:180 $ howdoi create tar archive > tar -cf backup.tar --exclude "www/subf3" www Installation pip install howdoi or brew install howdoi Usage New to howdoi? howdoi howdoi RTFM Introduction and installation Usage Contributing to howdoi Advanced usage Troubleshooting Commands usage: howdoi [-h] [-p POS] [-n NUM] [-a] [-l] [-c] [-x] [-C] [-j] [-v] [-e [ENGINE]] [--save] [--view] [--remove] [--empty] [QUERY ...] instant coding answers via the command line positional arguments: QUERY the question to answer optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -p POS, --pos POS select answer in specified position (default: 1) -n NUM, --num NUM number of answers to return (default: 1) -a, --all display the full text of the answer -l, --link display only the answer link -c, --color enable colorized output -x, --explain explain how answer was chosen -C, --clear-cache clear the cache -j, --json return answers in raw json format -v, --version display the current version of howdoi -e [ENGINE], --engine [ENGINE] search engine for this query (google, bing, duckduckgo) --save, --stash stash a howdoi answer --view view your stash --remove remove an entry in your stash --empty empty your stash environment variable examples: HOWDOI_COLORIZE=1 HOWDOI_DISABLE_CACHE=1 HOWDOI_DISABLE_SSL=1 HOWDOI_SEARCH_ENGINE=google HOWDOI_URL=serverfault.com Using the howdoi stashing feature (for more advanced features view the keep documentation). stashing: howdoi --save QUERY viewing: howdoi --view removing: howdoi --remove (will be prompted which answer to delete) emptying: howdoi --empty (empties entire stash, will be prompted to confirm) As a shortcut, if you commonly use the same parameters each time and don't want to type them, add something similar to your .bash_profile (or otherwise). This example gives you 5 colored results each time. alias h='function hdi(){ howdoi $* -c -n 5; }; hdi' And then to run it from the command line simply type: $ h format date bash You can also search other StackExchange properties for answers: HOWDOI_URL=cooking.stackexchange.com howdoi make pesto or as an alias: alias hcook='function hcook(){ HOWDOI_URL=cooking.stackexchange.com howdoi $* ; }; hcook' hcook make pesto Other useful aliases: alias hless='function hdi(){ howdoi $* -c | less --raw-control-chars --quit-if-one-screen --no-init; }; hdi' Integrations Slack integration available through slack-howdoi Telegram integration available through howdoi-telegram Discord integration available through discord-howdoi Emacs integration available through emacs-howdoi VSCode integration available on the marketplace Alfred integration available through alfred-howdoi Contributors Benjamin Gleitzman (@gleitz) Yanlam Ko (@YKo20010) Diana Arreola (@diarreola) Eyitayo Ogunbiyi (@tayoogunbiyi) Chris Nguyen (@chrisngyn) Shageldi Ovezov (@ovezovs) Mwiza Simbeye (@mwizasimbeye11) Shantanu Verma (@SaurusXI) Sheza Munir (@ShezaMunir) Jyoti Bisht (@joeyouss) And more! How to contribute We welcome contributions that make howdoi better and improve the existing functionalities of the project. We have created a separate guide to contributing to howdoi that explains how to get up and running with your first pull request. Notes Works with Python 3.7 and newer. Unfortunately Python 2.7 support has been discontinued :( Special thanks to Rich Jones (@miserlou) for the idea More thanks to Ben Bronstein for the logo