s, a simple shell script manager

Acknowledgements

s was originally inspired by f, the work of Colin T.A. Gray, an extraordinary former colleague of mine.

Purpose

Making quick edits to your shell scripts, adding new ones, adding the default shebang line and other boiler plate, remembering where you keep your scripts, etc. can get annoying. A lot of us do this pretty often every day, so why not make it as simple as possible? s tries to do this.

Some examples of what s does:

# Lists available scripts in $S_BIN_PATH
s

# If no script called "foo" exists, creates and edits it in $EDITOR.  If "foo"
# already exists, just edits it.  Uses the "default" template.  More about
# templates below.
s foo

# Uses the "python" template to create and/or edit a script "bar"
s -p bar

# Uses the "python_with_args" template to create and/or edit a script "baz"
s -t python_with_args baz

# Lists available templates
s -t

# Creates and/or edits a template "python"
s -t python

# Maybe you forgot what a script "foo" does
cat $(s foo)  # Prints the contents of "foo" to stdout

# Or you have a template called "foo" and forgot what's in it
cat $(s -t foo)

# Or you want to delete a script called "foo"
s -- rm foo  # -or-
rm $(s foo)

# Or delete a template called "foo"
s -t -- rm foo  # -or-
rm $(s -t foo)

# Maybe you just want to jump into your bin directory and do things the
# old-fashioned way
cd $(s)

# Or into your templates directory
cd $(s -t)

Usage

usage: s [-t [template name] [script name]]
         [-bzpre [script name]]
         [-- cmd [arg ...]]
         [-t -- cmd [arg ...]]
         [-h|--help]

With no args, `s` lists all scripts in $S_BIN_PATH.  In a non-terminal
environment, $S_BIN_PATH is printed to stdout.

adding/editing:
  -t [template name] [script name]
      If no extra arguments are given, lists available templates.  In a
      non-terminal environment, prints $S_TEMPLATES_PATH to stdout.

      If only a template name is given, edits or creates and edits that
      template in $EDITOR.  In a non-terminal environment, prints the path of
      the template to stdout.

      If a template name and script name are given, edits or creates and edits
      the script with the given template.

  -b [script]    Shorthand for `-t bash [script]`
  -z [script]    Shorthand for `-t zsh [script]`
  -p [script]    Shorthand for `-t python [script]`
  -r [script]    Shorthand for `-t ruby [script]`
  -e [script]    Shorthand for `-t perl [script]`

info/manipulation:
  -- cmd [arg ...]
      Performs a command with given args in directory specified by $S_BIN_PATH.

  -t -- cmd [arg ...]
      Performs a command with given args in directory specified by $S_TEMPLATES_PATH.

etc:
  -h, --help              Show this help screen.

Installation

1. Clone the s repo into a directory
2. Add the following somewhere in your .bashrc:

export S_BIN_PATH=<path to your script directory>
export PATH="<path to s repo directory>:$S_BIN_PATH:$PATH"

If everything is working, s should be available on the command line. You can also forego exporting S_BIN_PATH and s will default to using $HOME/.bin as the location of your scripts directory. If you do this, just make sure you include $HOME/.bin in your PATH.

Other features

Templates

s allows you to create scripts from templates. Nothing fancy here. All that's happening is that the template is copied to the location of the new script in the background before s opens it up for editing. Here are some examples of how to use templates:

s foo     # Uses the template "default" to add/edit a script "foo"
s -b bar  # Uses the template "bash" to add/edit a script "bar"
s -r baz  # Uses the template "ruby" to add/edit a script "baz"

# Uses the template "python_with_args" to add/edit a script "bing"
s -t python_with_args bing

# Lists available templates
s -t

# Creates and/or edits a template "foo"
s -t foo

s looks for templates in $S_TEMPLATES_PATH. By default, this variable points to templates in the s repo directory. You can also manually specify the location of your templates directory:

export S_TEMPLATES_PATH=<path to template directory>

Invoking commands in your bin or template directory

You can use s to perform commands in the directories specified by S_BIN_PATH or S_TEMPLATES_PATH. Here are some examples of how to do this:

# Make a copy of the script "do_something" called "do_something_similar"
s -- cp do_something do_something_similar

# List scripts in bin directory
s -- ls

# Remove a script called "foo"
s -- rm foo

# Make a copy of the template "python" called "different_python"
s -t -- cp python different_python

# List templates in templates directory
s -t -- ls

# Remove a template called "foo"
s -t -- rm foo

Any command can be run in either directory in this manner.

Non-terminal invocation

Certain s commands behave differently if not executed in a terminal. Here are some examples of how this is useful:

cd $(s)       # Change directory to $S_BIN_PATH
cat $(s foo)  # Print the contents of script "foo" to stdout

cd $(s -t)          # Change directory to $S_TEMPLATES_PATH
cat $(s -t python)  # Print the contents of template "python" to stdout

# Verbose versions of 's -m', 's -c', and 's -d'
mv $(s foo) $(s bar)  # Rename a script "foo" to "bar"
cp $(s foo) $(s bar)  # Create a new script "bar" using script "foo"
rm $(s bar)           # Remove a script "bar"

mv $(s -t foo) $(s -t bar)  # Rename a template "foo" to "bar"
cp $(s -t foo) $(s -t bar)  # Copy a template "foo" to "bar"
rm $(s -t bar)              # Remove a template "bar"

Arguments to the $EDITOR command

If you want to specify any arguments which will be passed to the $EDITOR command when it is used to edit a script, you can do so with the $S_EDITOR_ARGS variable. For example, if your $EDITOR was set to "vim" and you wanted vim to always set the file type to "zsh" when editing scripts with s, you could add the following to your bashrc:

export S_EDITOR_ARGS=(-c 'set ft=zsh')

...or in your zshrc:

S_EDITOR_ARGS=(-c 'set ft=zsh')

This will cause the command s uses to open the script file to effectively be the following:

vim -c 'set ft=zsh' <path to script file>