I have been adding one tip per day to my daily tips GitHub repo for the past month. It's a simple setup:
- I manually add tips to a YAML file
- I use a Python script to convert YAML to Markdown
- A helper script appends the Markdown file, README.md, with today's tip
I've also set up GitHub Actions to send me an email when I haven't added a tip yet; so far I've managed to add a new tip each day. Most of the tips are related to working in a shell or shell scripting because I spend most of my day working in the terminal and there are just about an endless supply of new things to learn with the shell.
cat tips.yaml | grep tags | cut -f2 -d'[' | sed -e 's/]$//' -e 's/, */\n/' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1rn
19 shell
8 productivity
7 r
5 functional programming
3 reminder
3 scripting
2 singularity
1 benchmarking
1 compression
1 defensive programming
1 documentation
1 habits
1 linting
1 project management
1 raspberry pi
1 self-help
1 system
1 visualisationMost of the tips are actually new to me and I have incorporated some of the tips into my daily work. A few of the tips I have added because I thought they were cool (like using script to save a shell session!) but don't have a use for, yet!
I really like the habit of having to write a daily tip because it forces me to find ways to improve the way I work every single day. If you're interested, I learned that you can get RSS updates from a GitHub repo, so add https://github.com/davetang/daily_tips/commits/main.atom to your RSS reader. And what do you mean you don't use a RSS reader!?
One month's worth of daily tips is included below and if you find yourself interested, either check out the repo periodically or subscribe to the RSS feed. Enjoy!
| Date | Tip | Explanation | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-04-14 | mv oldname.txt newname.txt && cat $_ |
$_ can be used to get the last argument of the previous command. | shell, productivity |
| 2025-04-15 | Just type the name of the directory to autocd into it | In Bash and Zsh autocd is on by default; use shopt autocd and setopt \| grep autocd to check. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-04-16 | Use purrr::walk() for side effects. |
When you do not care about the return value, use purrr::walk() instead of purrr::map(). |
r, functional programming |
| 2025-04-17 | Use fc to Fix Command. |
Opens your last command with $EDITOR and after you edit and save, the command runs immediately. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-04-18 | diff -y file1.txt file2.txt |
diff -y provides a side-by-side comparison to easily spot differences. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-04-19 | script mysession.log |
script save entire shell session (incl. input/output) for logging; use exit to stop session. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-04-20 | Use --containall with Singularity for better isolation |
Prevents container from reading or writing from the host; useful for testing in a minimal, clean environment. | singularity |
| 2025-04-21 | pstree -p PID |
Show processes in a tree with PID | shell, system |
| 2025-04-22 | Good enough now beats perfect later. | A working solution now is more useful than a perfect one that never arrives. | project management |
| 2025-04-23 | Consider using tryCatch() over stopifnot(). |
tryCatch() can handle and recover from errors, while stopifnot() halts execution. |
r, defensive programming |
| 2025-04-24 | apropos unzip |
If you know what a command does, but not the name use apropos to search the man pages! |
shell, documentation |
| 2025-04-25 | Use --cleanenv with Singularity |
Using --cleanenv prevents the container from inheriting most of the environment variables from the host. |
singularity |
| 2025-04-26 | tar -cJf archive-name.tar.xz folder/ | xz typically compresses better than gz but is slower; use for long term backups. | shell, compression |
| 2025-04-27 | watch vcgencmd measure_temp |
Measure the temperature every second. | raspberry pi |
| 2025-04-28 | Use the dot placeholder with {purrr}. | purrr::map_int(1:5, ~ . + 1) vs. purrr::map_int(1:5, function(x) x + 1). |
r, functional programming |
| 2025-04-29 | Use date and bc to measure elapsed time. |
Use $(date +%s.%N) to get times then use echo "${END} - ${START}" \| bc to get elapsed time. |
shell, benchmarking |
| 2025-04-30 | Apply the aggregation of marginal gains. | Follow the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. | self-help, habits |
| 2025-05-01 | find ~ -type f -size +100M |
Find files in your home directory that are larger than 100M using find. |
shell, reminder |
| 2025-05-02 | purrr::discard(~ stringr::str_detect(., "old")) |
Use purrr::discard to discard elements based on their values. |
r, functional programming |
| 2025-05-03 | purrr::list_rbind(my_list, names_to = "id") |
Use purrr::list_rbind() to combine list elements into a single data structure. |
r, functional programming |
| 2025-05-04 | f <- purrr::compose(sqrt, abs) |
Use purrr::compose() to combine multiple functions into one, chaining them from right to left. |
r, functional programming |
| 2025-05-05 | Use shellcheck to lint and find potential issues in your script. |
ShellCheck is a static analysis and linting tool for sh/bash scripts. | shell, linting |
| 2025-05-06 | Use the {gt} package to make nice looking tables in R. | The gt philosophy: we can construct a wide variety of useful tables with a cohesive set of table parts. | r, visualisation |
| 2025-05-07 | seq 10 \| datamash sum 1 mean 1 |
GNU datamash can perform basic numeric, textual and statistical operations on input textual data files. | shell, productivity |
| 2025-05-08 | Use rsync over scp |
rsync only transfers differences, has better support for resuming transfers, and has more features. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-05-09 | tmpfile=$(mktemp) |
Use mktemp for secure, race-free temp file creation. |
shell, scripting |
| 2025-05-10 | find . -maxdepth 1 -type f ! -name "*.sh" ! -name "*.md" -exec ls {} + |
Use ! with find to exclude files. |
shell, productivity |
| 2025-05-11 | trap 'echo Caught a signal (EXIT, INT, or TERM).; exit' EXIT INT TERM |
trap is useful for cleaning up temporary files, restoring settings, or just handling interruptions gracefully. |
shell, scripting |
| 2025-05-12 | echo Done with task at line $LINENO |
$LINENO gives the line number of the current command within a script or function. |
shell, scripting |
| 2025-05-13 | du -h --max-depth=1 \| sort -h |
Get size of files and top directories, then sort by human-readable sizes. | shell, reminder |
| 2025-05-14 | git config --global help.autocorrect 1 |
Auto-correct typos in Git commands. | shell, reminder |
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