How do I expand an alias defined when using zsh -c?
% zsh -c 'setopt aliases complete_aliases; alias d=date; d'
zsh:1: command not found: d
Use eval to force the zsh to parse the alias after the code has been read in:
zsh -c 'setopt aliases complete_aliases; alias d=date; eval d'
In this case, d will never expand, so doesn't need to be quoted.
In general you should properly quote all arguments to eval.
man zshmisc says:
There is a commonly encountered problem with aliases illustrated by the
following code:
alias echobar='echo bar'; echobar
This prints a message that the command echobar could not be found.
This happens because aliases are expanded when the code is read in; the
entire line is read in one go, so that when echobar is executed it is
too late to expand the newly defined alias. This is often a problem in
shell scripts, functions, and code executed with `source' or `.'.
Consequently, use of functions rather than aliases is recommended in
non-interactive code.
Related
One of my recipes in Yocto need to create a file containing a very specific line, something like:
${libdir}/something
To do this, I have the recipe task:
do_install() {
echo '${libdir}/something' >/path/to/my/file
}
Keeping in mind that I want that string exactly as shown, I can't figure out how to escape it to prevent bitbake from substituting in its own value of libdir.
I originally thought the echo command with single quotes would do the trick (as it does in the bash shell) but bitbake must be interpreting the line before passing it to the shell. I've also tried escaping it both with $$ and \$ to no avail.
I can find nothing in the bitbake doco about preventing variable expansion, just stuff to do with immediate, deferred and Python expansions.
What do I need to do to get that string into the file as is?
Bitbake seems to have particular issues in preventing expansion from taking place. Regardless of whether you use single or double quotes, it appears that the variables will be expanded before being passed to the shell.
Hence, if you want them to not be expanded, you need to effectively hide them from BitBake, and this can be done with something like:
echo -e '\x24{libdir}/something' >/path/to/my/file
This uses the hexadecimal version of $ so that BitBake does not recognise it as a variable to be expanded.
You do need to ensure you're running the correct echo command however. Under some distros (like Ubuntu), it might run the sh-internal echo which does not recognise the -e option. In order to get around that, you may have to run the variant of echo that lives on the file system (and that does recognise that option):
/bin/echo -e '\x24{libdir}/something' >/path/to/my/file
By default this task will be executed as shell function via /bin/sh, but it depends on your system what it will be as you can have a symlink named /bin/sh pointing to bash. The BitBake's manual prevents from using bashism syntax though.
You can consider just adding this task in your recipe as python function:
python do_install () {
with open('/path/to/your/file', 'a') as file:
file.write('${libdir}/something')
}
'a' stands for append.
This should eliminate the problem with variable expansion.
There is no standard way to escape these sorts of expressions that I am aware of, other than to try to break up the expression - accordingly this should work:
do_install() {
echo '$''{libdir}/something' >/path/to/my/file
}
The best solution is simply this:
bitbake_function() {
command $libdir/whatever
}
Bitbake will only expand ${libdir}; $libdir is passed through verbatim.
We don't have to worry about dollar signs that are not followed by {, and in this case, there is no need for libdir to be wrapped in braces.
The only time we run into a problem with just $foo is if we have something like ${foo}bar where the braces are required as delimiters so that bar isn't included into the variable name. In that situation, there are other solutions, such as for instance generating the shell syntax "$foo"bar. This is less cryptic than resorting to \x24.
If you need to use $ in variable assignment, remember that bitbake won't evaluate $whatever so you have to escape it for the underlying shell.
For instance I set gcc/ld Rpath option to use $ORIGIN keyword this way:
TARGET_LDFLAGS_append = " -Wl,-rpath-link=\\$$ORIGIN"
https://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/2017-September/037820.html
You can define a variable to be a literal dollar sign.
DOLLAR = "$"
do_install() {
echo '${DOLLAR}{libdir}/something' >/path/to/my/file
}
no extra quoting required.
I'm kind of just realizing how powerful the terminal can be. My question is essentially if I can create an alias that just prints the name of a directory. For example, I could easily make an alias such as "alias sitename="cd ~/sites/path/to/my/site/". But what I want is an alias that only prints the directory name so that I can use it for several things. So that, for example, if I wanted I could just say cd "alias", or mv from-dir "alias".
Is there a way to do this? I've tried and it seems to recognize the alias if I just type it in: it will report "alias" is a directory. But if I try to couple it with another command, it fails.
You don't want to use alias, what you are after is an environment variable
$ export SITENAME="~/sites/path/to/my/site/"
$ cd $SITENAME
Bash is quite picky over syntax - note the lack of spaces in the export and the $ when you use it.
Use a variable, simply
d=/path/to/some/directory
echo $d
cd $d
mv somedir $d/
You don't need to use an alias here, a variable is sufficient.
It sounds like you want to set a variable, not an alias. Such as,
sitename=/home/jimbo/. Then, cd $sitename would put you at /home/jimbo/.
If you want this variable to have permanence (i.e. you don't have to set it every time you open a new session), then you can make it an environmental variable using the export command or add it to your .bashrc file (typically located at $HOME/.bashrc) using the line: sitename=/home/jimbo/.
FYI, $HOME is another environmental variable that's equivalent to ~/.
Using a variable is the simplest solution. You could get fancy and use an array:
mydir() { echo "/my/directory"; }
To display the value
mydir
To use the value, you need some extra puncuation
cd $(mydir)
cd `mydir`
I know that I can use indirect expansion to call variables whose names are contained in other variables as follows
VAR="test"
VARNAME="VAR"
echo ${!VARNAME}
However if I try to redefine a variable with this:
VARVALUE=0
VALUE="VARVALUE"
${!VARNAME}=${!VALUE}
echo ${!VARNAME}
It doesnt work, and I get
bash: test=0: command not found
I can see why this variable declaration fails, but I can't see how to fix it. In searching I've only found examples calling variables with indirect expansion, but not defining them so.
edit:
After a bit more searching, I've tried
eval "${!VARNAME}=${!VALUE}"
which throws
bash: =0: command not found
Fiddling with it some more, I've managed to find a solution
eval "$VARNAME=${!VALUE}"
I've been working with TCL for some time now, and I have spent a long time trying to do the following (it seems easy and I think it should be, but I can't get it right):
I need to execute an external program by means of a tcl script. For that, I use the exec command. For using this external program, I need to input a variable amount of files. If I called this program straight from a cmd window, it would be something like:
C:\>myprogram -i file1 -i file2 -i file3 (etc., etc.)
However, when trying to implement this in a dynamic/variable way through tcl I get into trouble. The way I do it is by storing in some variable myvar all the "-i filex" I need (done in a loop), and then pass that as a parameter to the exec command. It would look something like:
exec myprogram $myvar
Doing that apparently creates some issues, because this myprogram fails to "see" myvar. I'm guessing that there is some sort of hidden terminator or some clash of different types of arguments that makes that in the end the exec command "sees" only myprogram.
So, my question is, does anyone know how to insert variable arguments into a call to exec?
You can use {*} or eval. See this question for example.
Specializing for your case:
Tcl 8.5 (and later):
exec myprogram {*}$myvar
Tcl 8.4 (and before):
eval [list exec myprogram] [lrange $myvar 0 end]
# Or...
eval [linsert $myvar 0 exec myprogram]
That's right, the old version is ugly (or non-obvious, or both). Because of that, people tended to write this instead:
eval exec myprogram $myvar
but that was slower than expected (OK, not so relevant when running an external program!) and has hazards when $myvar isn't a canonically-formatted list due to the way that eval works. It used to catch out even experienced Tcl programmers, and that's why we introduced new syntax in 8.5, which is specified to be surprise-free and is pretty short too.
So I found the question about how to view the change history of a file, but the change history of this particular file is huge and I'm really only interested in the changes of a particular method. So would it be possible to see the change history for just that particular method?
I know this would require git to analyze the code and that the analysis would be different for different languages, but method/function declarations look very similar in most languages, so I thought maybe someone has implemented this feature.
The language I'm currently working with is Objective-C and the SCM I'm currently using is git, but I would be interested to know if this feature exists for any SCM/language.
Recent versions of git log learned a special form of the -L parameter:
-L :<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by "<start>,<end>" (or the function name regex <funcname>) within the <file>. You may not give any pathspec limiters. This is currently limited to a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only give zero or one positive revision arguments. You can specify this option more than once.
...
If “:<funcname>” is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is a regular expression that denotes the range from the first funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next funcname line. “:<funcname>” searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. “^:<funcname>” searches from the start of file.
In other words: if you ask Git to git log -L :myfunction:path/to/myfile.c, it will now happily print the change history of that function.
Using git gui blame is hard to make use of in scripts, and whilst git log -G and git log --pickaxe can each show you when the method definition appeared or disappeared, I haven't found any way to make them list all changes made to the body of your method.
However, you can use gitattributes and the textconv property to piece together a solution that does just that. Although these features were originally intended to help you work with binary files, they work just as well here.
The key is to have Git remove from the file all lines except the ones you're interested in before doing any diff operations. Then git log, git diff, etc. will see only the area you're interested in.
Here's the outline of what I do in another language; you can tweak it for your own needs.
Write a short shell script (or other program) that takes one argument -- the name of a source file -- and outputs only the interesting part of that file (or nothing if none of it is interesting). For example, you might use sed as follows:
#!/bin/sh
sed -n -e '/^int my_func(/,/^}/ p' "$1"
Define a Git textconv filter for your new script. (See the gitattributes man page for more details.) The name of the filter and the location of the command can be anything you like.
$ git config diff.my_filter.textconv /path/to/my_script
Tell Git to use that filter before calculating diffs for the file in question.
$ echo "my_file diff=my_filter" >> .gitattributes
Now, if you use -G. (note the .) to list all the commits that produce visible changes when your filter is applied, you will have exactly those commits that you're interested in. Any other options that use Git's diff routines, such as --patch, will also get this restricted view.
$ git log -G. --patch my_file
Voilà!
One useful improvement you might want to make is to have your filter script take a method name as its first argument (and the file as its second). This lets you specify a new method of interest just by calling git config, rather than having to edit your script. For example, you might say:
$ git config diff.my_filter.textconv "/path/to/my_command other_func"
Of course, the filter script can do whatever you like, take more arguments, or whatever: there's a lot of flexibility beyond what I've shown here.
The closest thing you can do is to determine the position of your function in the file (e.g. say your function i_am_buggy is at lines 241-263 of foo/bar.c), then run something to the effect of:
git log -p -L 200,300:foo/bar.c
This will open less (or an equivalent pager). Now you can type in /i_am_buggy (or your pager equivalent) and start stepping through the changes.
This might even work, depending on your code style:
git log -p -L /int i_am_buggy\(/,+30:foo/bar.c
This limits the search from the first hit of that regex (ideally your function declaration) to thirty lines after that. The end argument can also be a regexp, although detecting that with regexp's is an iffier proposition.
git log has an option '-G' could be used to find all differences.
-G Look for differences whose added or removed line matches the
given <regex>.
Just give it a proper regex of the function name you care about. For example,
$ git log --oneline -G'^int commit_tree'
40d52ff make commit_tree a library function
81b50f3 Move 'builtin-*' into a 'builtin/' subdirectory
7b9c0a6 git-commit-tree: make it usable from other builtins
The correct way is to use git log -L :function:path/to/file as explained in eckes answer.
But in addition, if your function is very long, you may want to see only the changes that various commit had introduced, not the whole function lines, included unmodified, for each commit that maybe touch only one of these lines. Like a normal diff does.
Normally git log can view differences with -p, but this not work with -L.
So you have to grep git log -L to show only involved lines and commits/files header to contextualize them. The trick here is to match only terminal colored lines, adding --color switch, with a regex. Finally:
git log -L :function:path/to/file --color | grep --color=never -E -e "^(^[\[[0-9;]*[a-zA-Z])+" -3
Note that ^[ should be actual, literal ^[. You can type them by pressing ^V^[ in bash, that is Ctrl + V, Ctrl + [. Reference here.
Also last -3 switch, allows to print 3 lines of output context, before and after each matched line. You may want to adjust it to your needs.
Show function history with git log -L :<funcname>:<file> as showed in eckes's answer and git doc
If it shows nothing, refer to Defining a custom hunk-header to add something like *.java diff=java to the .gitattributes file to support your language.
Show function history between commits with git log commit1..commit2 -L :functionName:filePath
Show overloaded function history (there may be many function with same name, but with different parameters) with git log -L :sum\(double:filepath
git blame shows you who last changed each line of the file; you can specify the lines to examine so as to avoid getting the history of lines outside your function.