rsmsn_blog/content/posts/new-favorite-website.md

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title	date	tags	author	showToc	TocOpen	draft	hidemeta	description	disableHLJS	disableShare	disableHLJS	hideSummary	searchHidden	ShowReadingTime	ShowBreadCrumbs	ShowPostNavLinks	ShowWordCount	ShowRssButtonInSectionTermList	UseHugoToc	cover
New Favorite Website!	2023-09-27T10:07:01-04:00	resources shell commandline	Me	false	false	false	false	Regex101 has long been one of my favorite reference tools. As of today, I will be adding ExplainShell to the list of must-use tools!.	true	false	false	false	true	true	true	true	true	true	true	image alt caption relative hidden new-website-cover.png Add explainshell.com to your list of favorite websites! Right behind regex101.com. ExplainShell and Regex101 are the most needed tools in your arsenal. false true

For the longest time, I had Regex101 as a bookmarked website for (almost) daily use. Not only does it help me build muscle memory for using regex queries without banging my head against the wall with a bunch of print and debug statements, but if I happen to be in a different language - say in javascript instead of python - it gives you the correct syntax for using regex in that language. There are even spin-off projects to use this tool while offline.

You can even test it again the strings you do (or don't!) want to verify against. This website is beyond cool.

So this morning, when I saw Jérémy Garniaux ask if there was an "explain shell" for Vim or Neovim, this was the Regex101 but for shell commands.

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When you first load ExplainShell.com, you're greeted with a clean, minimal interface with some explanation and a very obvious search bar.

For those new to the command line, it also shares some suggested queries to search with. As you read over the results, you can hover on the different elements of the command and it will highlight the explanation below. I mean, look at how clean and nice that is!

As many other command line users are apt to do, I use the man page all the time for commands and flags I'm unsure of, or need a refresher on. While knowing what a certain flag is and what it does for a specific command is supremely helpful, I find the man pages a tad bit overwhelming. You can always grep for what you're looking for, but even then I've found times where it only pulls out half of the full description, or even just the line the definition is on.

So the fact that this resources can extract exactly what you need in your command from a man page without digging through every line, is extremely useful! Going back to Jérémy's original toot and question... who is going to make this same tool for Neovim?

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