Matching Multiple Values In A Switch Statement

Switch statements are a handy way to execute different branches of code based on a value match. This is often what is used in Redux reducers when updating the state in response to certain actions.

But what if you need multiple values to result in the same branch of execution without duplicating the code?

The execution of a switch statement falls through, so after one match, it will continue to try and do subsequent matches if you don’t interrupt the execution with a break or return. Conveniently, this solves our problem of matching multiple values.

switch (action.type) {
  case "UPDATE_NAME":
  case "UPDATE_DURATION":
    let newData = anotherReducer(state.data, action);
    return { ...state, data: newData };
  default:
    return state;
}

See the MDN docs for more details.

Display A Message With Alfred

Want to display some text in a large format on your screen for someone else to read? The Alfred app can help.

Activate Alfred and type in some text. Then hit Cmd+L.

The shorter the snippet of the text, the larger it will appear.

Generate New Phoenix App Without Brunch

By default when you create a new Phoenix app using phx.new, a set of files and configurations will be generated for Brunch. Though the Phoenix team decided to use Brunch, you don’t have to. You may not want Phoenix to handle asset building or you may just prefer another build tool. Either way, if you’d like to opt out, you can include the --no-brunch flag when generating the project.

$ mix phx.new --no-brunch my_app

If you have an existing project that you’d like to remove Brunch from, there is some information in Phoenix’s Static Assets documentation.

Fix The Spelling Of A Word

If there is a misspelled word (:set spell to see what is misspelled), you can navigate the cursor over that word and hit (from normal mode) z=. This will open up a screen of possible corrections. The one you are most likely looking for will be toward the top. Each possible spelling will have a number next to it. Enter the number of the word you are looking for and hit enter. The spelling of that word will have been updated.

Try misspelling something and give it a try yourself.

See :h z= for more details.

h/t Jake Worth

Get The Short Version Of The Latest Commit

As part of some automated scripting for an app deployment I wanted to be able to get the short version of the latest commit to the current git repo. Git’s rev-parse command is the perfect fit for this.

$ git rev-parse --short HEAD
708248b

See man git-rev-parse for more details.

source

Display All The Terminal Colors

The following snippet of bash scripting will print out a nicely formatted collection of all the terminal colors.

for x in {0..8}; do 
    for i in {30..37}; do 
        for a in {40..47}; do 
            echo -ne "\e[$x;$i;$a""m\\\e[$x;$i;$a""m\e[0;37;40m "
        done
        echo
    done
done
echo ""

This is a great way to figure out the escape codes you need for coloring and styling text in a bash script.

source

h/t Dillon Hafer

Serve Static Assets From Custom Phoenix Directory

When you new up a Phoenix project, an endpoint.ex file will be generated. This file is full of different plugs for handling incoming traffic. The Plug.Static declaration specifies how your application will handle and serve requests for static files.

  plug Plug.Static,
    at: "/", from: :my_app, gzip: false,
    only: ~w(css fonts images js favicon.ico robots.txt)

The from options declares where these static files are located. In this case it references our application (:my_app) as the target which will translate to its priv/static directory.

If you instead want to serve your files from a different, custom directory, you can replace it with the path to that directory.

  plug Plug.Static,
    at: "/", from: "priv/my_frontend/static", gzip: false,
    only: ~w(css fonts images js favicon.ico robots.txt)

source

Clone A Repo Locally From .git

If you want to get a clean copy of a repository that you have locally, there is no need to go over the wire cloning it from the remote. You can clone from a local copy.

$ git clone my-repo/.git path/to/fresh-copy

See man git-clone for more details.

Specifying The Digest Directory For Phoenix

By default, Phoenix targets priv/static when preparing digested assets for production. This process happens when running mix phx.digest.

If you are doing some custom work with your assets such that they are in a different location, you’ll need to tell Phoenix where to look. To do this, just include an optional path argument.

$ mix phx.digest path/to/my/assets

The digests will be put in that target directory. If you’d like to specify a different output directory, such as priv/static, include the -o flag.

$ mix phx.digest path/to/my/assets -o priv/static

Capitalize All The Words In PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL provides the string function initcap() as a way of capitalizing all words. In the process, it cleans up the casing of the remaining parts of the words.

Here are some examples of how it works.

> select initcap('hello, world');
   initcap
--------------
 Hello, World

> select initcap('HELLO, WORLD');
   initcap
--------------
 Hello, World

See the String Functions and Operators docs for more details.

Lighten And Darken With CSS Brightness Filter

CSS has a filter property that can be used with a variety of filter functions. One of them is the brightness() filter. By feeding a percentage less than 100% to brightness(), the target element will be made darker. Inversely, feeding a percentage greater than 100% to brightness() will make the element brighter.

.brighter-span {
  filter: brightness(150%);
}

.darker-span {
  filter: brightness(50%);
}

See this CSS Tricks Article on the filter property for more details. Check out the browser support story here.

Go To File With Line Number

I often use gf as supported by Vim or with the help of plugins like rails.vim as a way of quickly navigating to existing files. For unloaded files, this loads a buffer with the cursor at the top of the buffer. For existing buffers, it opens to that buffer with the cursor where it was when you left.

Vim also supports a slightly fancier goto file command, gF. If this command is used while the cursor is over a file with a line number appended to the end, it will not only open up a buffer with that file, it will move the cursor to the specified line number.

With this repository, I could try it out by moving the cursor over the following text and hitting gF.

README.md:100

This will open up a buffer for README.md with the cursor at line 100.

See :h gF for more details.

Access A Value Logged To The DevTools Console

Did your app just log an object to the dev tools console and you’d like to interact with that object? It’s not straightforward, but you can do it.

Assuming you already have dev tools opened to the console tab, right click on the value that has been logged to the console. Select the Store as Global Variable option. This will re-log the value assigning it to the temp1 variable.

You can now reference that object as temp1 accessing its values and calling functions.

You can even do this with multiple logged values, each subsequent one will be assigned incrementing variable names: temp2, temp3, etc.

source

List Files Ordered By Modification Date

The ls command lists the files in a directory. Tacking on the -l flag will list it in long format. By default, everything is listed in lexicographical order. This is what ls -l looks like for this repository.

-rw-r--r--    1 jbranchaud  staff    628 Feb 14  2016 CONTRIBUTING.md
-rw-r--r--    1 jbranchaud  staff   1058 Feb 19  2015 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--    1 jbranchaud  staff  40983 Aug 18 16:59 README.md
drwxr-xr-x    5 jbranchaud  staff    170 Apr  1 14:45 ack
drwxr-xr-x    5 jbranchaud  staff    170 Feb 24 16:31 chrome
...

Sometimes you want a sense of what has been modified and when. Lexicographical order isn’t going to help much here. By tacking on the -t flag, the files will be listed in order of their modification dates. Here is ls -lt for the same repository.

-rw-r--r--    1 jbranchaud  staff  40983 Aug 18 16:59 README.md
drwxr-xr-x  119 jbranchaud  staff   4046 Aug 17 11:38 vim
drwxr-xr-x    5 jbranchaud  staff    170 Aug 16 10:47 internet
drwxr-xr-x   23 jbranchaud  staff    782 Aug  1 10:17 javascript
drwxr-xr-x    7 jbranchaud  staff    238 Jul 22 14:04 webpack
...

See man ls for more details.

Quickly Switch To A Buffer By Number

There are a number of different commands you can use for switching to a buffer by its number. For example, if you want to switch to the buffer assigned 7, you can do :7b or :e #7. However, there is a quicker way than typing out either of those commands.

You may already be familiar with CTRL-^ for switching to the alternate file which is generally the previous buffer. If you precede that command with a number, you will switch to the buffer with that number instead of the alternate file.

From normal mode

7 Ctrl-^

will switch to buffer 7.

See :h Ctrl-^ for more details.

Search Tweets By Author

Twitter has some advanced search features that allow you to do more than just search by keyword. The from:<author> syntax is the way that you can restrict your search results to a specific twitter user.

By using "pair programming" from:hashrocket, I am able to find all of the tweets by @hashrocket that use the exact phrase pair programming.

Detect If You Are On A Mac

There are a couple ways of detecting with vimscript if you are on a mac. This can be useful if you are writing a plugin with OS-specific functionality. Here are two ways to make that check.

if has('macunix') || has('mac') || has('osx')
  ...
endif

Alternatively, you can use Vim’s system() function to execute unix’s uname command. This command will give you the name of the operating system. In the event you are using a Mac, the result of uname should be Darwin. The following regex match is a good way to make this check.

if system('uname') =~ "Darwin"
  ...
endif

See :h has(), :h system(), and man uname for more details.

Check For An Executable

Sometimes Vim needs to reach outside of itself to use an existing program. For example, wiring up auto-formatting of JavaScript code requires Vim to call out to the prettier binary.

We want our .vimrc files and plugins to, generally, be as portable as possible. What happens if you haven’t yet installed a particular program? Vim will likely experience a runtime exception. One way to get around this is to check for the presence of that program on the path. If it isn’t there, don’t do the thing. We can use the executable() function for this.

if executable('prettier')
  ...
endif

It will return 1 (true) if prettier is an executable on the path, otherwise it will return 0 (false).

See :help executable() for more details.

Create Bootstrapped Apps With Yarn

The yarn cli comes with a create command that is a convenience command for generating bootstrapped apps that follow the create-<name>-app convention.

Want to create a React.js app using create-react-app, invoke the following command:

$ yarn create react-app my-app

Don’t already have a particular package globally installed? yarn create will install it for you. For instance, the following command with install and use create-vue-app:

$ yarn create vue-app my-other-app

h/t Gabe Reis

Specify Port Of CRA's Webpack Dev Server

create-react-app gives you a set of scripts, one of which allows you to start a development server that bundles and serves your javascript. This is handled under the hood via webpack-dev-server. By default it attempts to serve from port 3000. If port 3000 is taken it will attempt to connect to another sequential port.

Alternatively, you can just specify the port when starting the development server. This can be done with the PORT env var.

$ PORT=3333 yarn start

Yarn Commands Without The Emojis

If you are a hater and you’d like to run yarn commands without emojis being playfully included in the output, just include the --no-emoji flag. The output of a command like add will look like this:

$ yarn add chalk --no-emoji
yarn add v0.17.10
[1/4] Resolving packages...
[2/4] Fetching packages...
[3/4] Linking dependencies...
[4/4] Building fresh packages...
success Saved lockfile.
success Saved 7 new dependencies.
├─ ansi-styles@3.1.0
├─ chalk@2.0.1
├─ color-convert@1.9.0
├─ color-name@1.1.3
├─ escape-string-regexp@1.0.5
├─ has-flag@2.0.0
└─ supports-color@4.2.0
Done in 0.54s.

See yarn help for details.

Rebase Commits With An Arbitrary Command

Interactive rebasing is a powerful way to manage and tend to the history of a git repository. Rewording and squashing commits are fairly common actions. But what if you need to run some arbitrary command against a series of recent commits?

This is where the --exec flag comes in to play.

$ git rebase -i HEAD~3 --exec "git commit --amend --reset-authors -CHEAD"

This generates an interactive rebase file that you can review and save when ready.

pick ea4a215 Add Globally Install A Package With Yarn as a javascript til
exec git commit --amend --reset-author -CHEAD
pick a4f4143 Add Initialize A New JavaScript Project With Yarn as a javascript til
exec git commit --amend --reset-author -CHEAD
pick 2f00aeb Add Default And Named Exports From The Same Module as a javascript til
exec git commit --amend --reset-author -CHEAD

As you can see, the specified command is prepared for execution for each commit involved in the rebase.

h/t Patricia Arbona

Default And Named Exports From The Same Module

ES6 module syntax allows for a single default export and any number of named exports. In fact, you can have both named exports and a default export in the same module.

Here is an example:

// src/animals.js
export default function() {
  console.log('We are all animals!');
}

export function cat() {
  console.log('Meeeow!');
}

export function dog() {
  console.log('Rufff!');
}

In this case, you could import the default and named exports like so:

// src/index.js
import animals, { cat, dog } from './animals.js';

animals(); // "We are all animals!"
cat();     // "Meeeow!"
dog();     // "Rufff!"

source

Initialize A New JavaScript Project With Yarn

Yarn, like NPM, has a basic command for initializing a new JavaScript project.

$ yarn init

This will ask you a number of questions about your project like the name and what kind of license you want to use. In the end, it just creates a package.json file which can be used with yarn or npm.

Globally Install A Package With Yarn

I’m used to using the -g flag with npm to install packages globally.

$ npm install -g create-react-app

But how do I achieve the same thing with yarn?

By using the global command prefix, I can do a number of yarn tasks globally, including adding a package.

$ yarn global add create-react-app

source

Show Tables That Match A Pattern In MySQL

An unfamiliar MySQL database with tons of tables can be a difficult thing to navigate. You may have an idea of the kind of table you are looking for based on a domain concept you’ve seen elsewhere.

You can pare down the results returned by show tables by including a like clause with a pattern. For example, this statement will show me only tables that have the word user in them:

> show tables like '%user%';
+-------------------------------+
| Tables_in_jbranchaud (%user%) |
+-------------------------------+
| admin_users                   |
| users                         |
+-------------------------------+

Rename A Remote

If you just added a remote (git remote add ...) and messed up the name or just need to rename some existing remote, you can do so with the rename command.

First, let’s see the remotes we have:

$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/jbranchaud/til.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/jbranchaud/til.git (push)

To then rename origin to destination, for example, we can issue the following command:

$ git remote rename origin destination

See man git-remote for more details.

Dump A MySQL Database To A File

The mysqldump client is a handy tool for creating a backup or snapshot of a MySQL database. The standard use of this command produces an alphabetical series of statements that comprise the structure and data of the specified database. It directs all of this to stdout. You’ll likely want to redirect it to a file.

$ mysqldump my_database > my_database_backup.sql

The output will include special comments with MySQL directives that disable things like constraint checking. This is what allows the output to be in alphabetical order without necessarily violating any foreign key constraints.

If you need to dump multiple databases, include the --databases flag with a space-separated list of database names. Or dump all of them with --all-databases.

See man mysqldump for more details.

Display Output In A Vertical Format In MySQL

Output for tables with lots of columns can be hard to read and sometimes overflow the terminal window. Consider the output from Show Indexes For A Table:

> show indexes in users;
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+
| Table | Non_unique | Key_name     | Seq_in_index | Column_name | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type | Comment | Index_comment |
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+
| users |          0 | PRIMARY      |            1 | id          | A         |           0 |     NULL | NULL   |      | BTREE      |         |               |
| users |          0 | unique_email |            1 | email       | A         |           0 |     NULL | NULL   |      | BTREE      |         |               |
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+

We can vertically orient the output of a statement by terminating it with \G instead of ; (or \g).

> show indexes in users\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
        Table: users
   Non_unique: 0
     Key_name: PRIMARY
 Seq_in_index: 1
  Column_name: id
    Collation: A
  Cardinality: 0
     Sub_part: NULL
       Packed: NULL
         Null:
   Index_type: BTREE
      Comment:
Index_comment:
*************************** 2. row ***************************
        Table: users
   Non_unique: 0
     Key_name: unique_email
 Seq_in_index: 1
  Column_name: email
    Collation: A
  Cardinality: 0
     Sub_part: NULL
       Packed: NULL
         Null:
   Index_type: BTREE
      Comment:
Index_comment:

Show Indexes For A Table In MySQL

When describing a table, such as users:

> describe users;
+------------+-----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type                  | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+-----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id         | mediumint(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| first_name | varchar(80)           | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| last_name  | varchar(80)           | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| email      | varchar(80)           | NO   | UNI | NULL    |                |
+------------+-----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

We can see in the Key column that there’s a primary key and a unique key for this table on id and email, respectively.

These keys are indexes. To get more details about each of the indexes on this table, we can use the show indexes command.

> show indexes in users;
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+
| Table | Non_unique | Key_name     | Seq_in_index | Column_name | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type |
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+
| users |          0 | PRIMARY      |            1 | id          | A         |           0 |     NULL | NULL   |      | BTREE      |
| users |          0 | unique_email |            1 | email       | A         |           0 |     NULL | NULL   |      | BTREE      |
+-------+------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+

List Databases And Tables In MySQL

If you’ve started a mysql session, but haven’t connected to a particular database yet, you can list the available databases like so:

> show databases;
+-----------------------------+
| Database                    |
+-----------------------------+
| information_schema          |
| my_app_dev                  |
+-----------------------------+

If you are curious about the tables in a particular database, you can list them by specifying the database’s name:

> show tables in my_app_dev;
+------------------------------+
| Tables_in_my_app_dev         |
+------------------------------+
| pokemons                     |
| trainers                     |
+------------------------------+

Alternatively, you can connect to the database of interest and then there is no need to specify the name of the database going forward.

> use my_app_dev;
> show tables;
+------------------------------+
| Tables_in_my_app_dev         |
+------------------------------+
| pokemons                     |
| trainers                     |
+------------------------------+

Change The Nullability Of A Column

Do you have an existing table with a column that is exactly as you want it except that it needs to be changed to either null: false or null: true?

One option is to use ActiveRecord’s change_column_null method in your migration.

For example to change a nullable column to null: false, you’ll want a migration like the following:

def change
  change_column_null :posts, :title, false
end

Note, if you have existing records with null values in the title column, then you’ll need to deal with those before migrating.

If you want to make an existing column nullable, change that false to true:

def change
  change_column_null :posts, :title, true
end

Create A List Of Atoms

The ~w sigil makes it easy to create a word list — a list of strings — where each word is separated by a space.

> ~w(bulbasaur charmander squirtle)
["bulbasaur", "charmander", "squirtle"]

By appending an a onto that sigil construct, you are instructing Elixir that you would instead like a list of atoms.

> ~w(bulbasaur charmander squirtle)a
[:bulbasaur, :charmander, :squirtle]

source

Pretty Printing JSONB Rows in PostgreSQL

Who needs a document store when you can just use PostgreSQL’s JSONB data type? Viewing rows of JSONB output can be challenging though because it defaults to printing them as a single line of text.

> select '{"what": "is this", "nested": {"items 1": "are the best", "items 2": [1, 2, 3]}}'::jsonb;
                                      jsonb
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 {"what": "is this", "nested": {"items 1": "are the best", "items 2": [1, 2, 3]}}
(1 row)

Fortunately, Postgres comes with a function for prettying up the format of the output of these rows — jsonb_pretty

> select jsonb_pretty('{"what": "is this", "nested": {"items 1": "are the best", "items 2": [1, 2, 3]}}'::jsonb);
            jsonb_pretty
------------------------------------
 {                                 +
     "what": "is this",            +
     "nested": {                   +
         "items 1": "are the best",+
         "items 2": [              +
             1,                    +
             2,                    +
             3                     +
         ]                         +
     }                             +
 }
(1 row)

h/t Jack Christensen

Generating And Executing SQL

Rails’ ActiveRecord can easily support 90% of the querying we do against the tables in our database. However, there is the occasional exceptional query that is more easily written in SQL — perhaps that query cannot even be written with the ActiveRecord DSL. For these instances, we need a way to generate and execute SQL safely. The sanitize_sql_array method is invaluable for this.

First, let’s get a connection and some variables that we can use downstream in our query.

> conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection
=> #<ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::PostgreSQLAdapter ...>
> one, ten = 1, 10
=> [1, 10]

Now, we are ready to safely generate our SQL query as a string. We have to use send because it is not publicly available. Generally, this is frowned upon, but in my opinion it is worth breaking the private interface to ensure our SQL is sanitized.

> sql = ActiveRecord::Base.send(:sanitize_sql_array, ["select generate_series(?, ?);", one, ten])
=> "select generate_series(1, 10);"

Lastly, we can execute the query with our connection and inspect the results.

> result = conn.execute(sql)
   (0.4ms)  select generate_series(1, 10);
=> #<PG::Result:0x007facd93128a0 status=PGRES_TUPLES_OK ntuples=10 nfields=1 cmd_tuples=10>
> result.to_a
=> [{"generate_series"=>1},
 {"generate_series"=>2},
 {"generate_series"=>3},
 {"generate_series"=>4},
 {"generate_series"=>5},
 {"generate_series"=>6},
 {"generate_series"=>7},
 {"generate_series"=>8},
 {"generate_series"=>9},
 {"generate_series"=>10}]

Change To That New Directory

The $_ variable provided by bash is always set to the last argument of the previous command. One handy use of this is for changing directories into a newly created directory.

$ mkdir new_dir && cd $_

This command will leave you in your newly created directory, new_dir.

We can imagine using this bash variable in a number of similar scenarios as well. What if we are using some language specific command that creates a directory? Will it work when creating a new Phoenix or Rails project?

It sure will.

Give it a try with Phoenix:

mix phx.new my_app && cd $_

or with Rails:

rails new app && cd $_

source

Ins And Outs Of Pry

When executing commands during a Pry session, you’ll see an incrementing number for each prompt as you enter each statement. These numbers can be used to look up the inputs and outputs of each statement executed during the session. The statements and their results are made available in the array-like _in_ and _out_ objects.

[1] pry(main)> :one
=> :one
[2] pry(main)> 1 + 1
=> 2
[3] pry(main)> ["t", "h", "r", "e", "e"].join
=> "three"
[4] pry(main)> _in_.to_a
=> [nil, ":one\n", "1 + 1\n", "[\"t\", \"h\", \"r\", \"e\", \"e\"].join\n"]
[5] pry(main)> _out_.to_a
=> [nil, :one, 2, "three", [nil, ":one\n", "1 + 1\n", "[\"t\", \"h\", \"r\", \"e\", \"e\"].join\n"]]
[6] pry(main)> _out_[2]
=> 2
[7] pry(main)> _in_[2]
=> "1 + 1\n"

source

Write A Query Result To File With Postgres

Generally when writing a query in psql a statement will be terminated with a semicolon. An alternative approach is to end it with a \g instead. This will also send the query to the Postgres server for execution.

select 1 \g

If a filename is included after the \g, then the result of the query will be written to that file instead of output to the psql session.

> select 1, 2, 3 \g query_result.txt

If we cat that file, we can see the query result.

Time: 4.293 ms
> \! cat query_result.txt
 ?column? | ?column? | ?column?
----------+----------+----------
        1 |        2 |        3
(1 row)

See man psql for more details.

What Is On The Runtime Path?

All of the plugins, syntax highlighting, language-specific indentation that extend the default behavior of Vim are on the runtime path. If something isn’t on Vim’s runtime path, then Vim won’t know about and as a result will not load it at runtime.

How do we see what is on the runtime path?

The rtp option is the shorthand for runtimepath. Calling set on either of these will show us the list of runtime paths, or at least some of them.

:set rtp

This will generally be a truncated list if you have a lot of plugins. To be sure you are seeing all of them, use echo instead.

:echo &rtp

See :h rtp for more details.

h/t Chris Erin

Undo Some Command Line Editing

When using some of the fancy command line editing shortcuts, such as ctrl-u, you may end up erroneously changing or deleting part of the current command. Retyping it may be a pain or impossible if you’ve forgotten exactly what was changed. Fortunately, bash’s command line editing has undo built in. Just hit ctrl-_ a couple times to get back to where you want to be.

h/t Chris Erin

source

Inspecting The Process Message Queue

A core tenant of Elixir is message passing between processes. So, if a process is sent a message, where does that message go? What happens if it gets sent many messages? The Process.info/2 function allows us to inspect the message queue.

First, let’s send some messages (to ourself) and then keep an eye on the length of the message queue as we go.

> send self(), {:error, "this is bad"}
{:error, "this is bad"}
> Process.info(self(), :message_queue_len)
{:message_queue_len, 1}
> send self(), {:hello, "world"}
{:hello, "world"}
> Process.info(self(), :message_queue_len)
{:message_queue_len, 2}

Now, I am curious what those specific messages are. Let’s ask Process.info/2 for the messages that are in the message queue.

> Process.info(self(), :messages)
{:messages, [error: "this is bad", hello: "world"]}

There are a lot of other things that Process.info/2 can tell us about a process. See the Erlang docs for process_info for more details.

Cherry Pick A Range Of Commits

Git’s cherry-pick command allows you to specify a range of commits to be cherry picked onto the current branch. This can be done with the A..B style syntax — where A is the older end of the range.

Consider a scenario with the following chain of commits: A - B - C - D.

$ git cherry-pick B..D

This will cherry pick commits C and D onto HEAD. This is because the lower-bound is exclusive. If you’d like to include B as well. Try the following:

$ git cherry-pick B^..D

See man git-cherry-pick for more details.

Hiding The tmux Status Bar

The tmux status bar is a great place to show information about your tmux session as well as things like the time and date. Sometimes you just want to hide it though. This command will help.

:set -g status off

Hit enter and it is gone. If you want to show the status bar again, simply turn it back on.

:set -g status on

source

Listing Files In IEx

When you start an IEx session, you do so in the context of some directory — the current working directory. This context can be important if you need to do something like import a file. In fact, you may want to know what files are available in the current working directory.

You can list them all out within IEx using ls/0.

iex(1)> ls()
           .git     .gitignore      README.md         _build         assets         config
           deps            lib        mix.exs       mix.lock           priv           test
            tmp

You can also list the contents of some other specific directory by naming it when invoking ls/1.

See h() within IEx for more details.

Case-Insensitive Search With Ack

Use the -i flag to perform a case-insensitive search with ack.

$ ack -i easter

ack/ack-bar.md
3:The [`ack`](https://beyondgrep.com/) utility has a fun Easter egg that dumps

postgres/configure-the-timezone.md
18:Eastern time.

If you are a Vim user, you may be familiar with smart-case. The --smart-case option is a related Ack feature worth checking out.

See man ack for more details.

Update The URL Of A Remote

I just changed the name of a Github repository. One of the implications of this is that the remote URL that my local git repository has on record is now out of date. I need to update it.

If I use git-remote with the -v flag. I can see what remotes I currently have.

$ git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:jbranchaud/pokemon.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:jbranchaud/pokemon.git (push)

Now, to update the URL for that remote, I can use git remote set-url specifying the name of the remote and the updated URL.

$ git remote set-url origin git@github.com:jbranchaud/pokemon_deluxe.git

If I check again, I can see it has been updated accordingly.

$ git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:jbranchaud/pokemon_deluxe.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:jbranchaud/pokemon_deluxe.git (push)

Defining Multiple Clauses In An Anonymous Function

Anonymous functions often take the approach of doing a single thing with the inputs, regardless of their shape or values. There is no need to limit ourselves though. The same pattern matching that we use all over our Elixir programs can be utilized to define multiple clauses in an anonymous function as well.

Consider the following example:

iex> my_function = fn
  {:ok, x} -> "Everything is ok: #{x}"
  {:error, x} -> "There was an error: #{x}"
end
#Function<6.52032458/1 in :erl_eval.expr/5>

We can then invoke our anonymous function using the bound variable to see what results we get with different kinds of inputs.

iex> my_function.({:ok, 123})
"Everything is ok: 123"
iex> my_function.({:error, "be warned"})
"There was an error: be warned"

source

Remove The Default Value On A Column

You have a column on one of your database tables with a default value. You’d like to remove the default value. Removing the default is the same as setting it to nil. You can do this with the ActiveRecord DSL using the change_column_default method.

def change
  change_column_default :users, :age, nil
end

See the docs for more details.

Chaining Multiple RSpec Change Matchers

It can be handy to use RSpec’s change matchers to determine if some method or process creates a new record.

expect{ Registration.create(attrs) }.to change{ User.count }.by(1)

But what if we are testing a method that creates a couple different records in the system?

RSpec allows us to chain together change matchers with and. Consider this additional contrived example.

expect {
  Project.generate(attrs)
}.to change{ Project.count }.by(1).and \
     change{ User.count }.by(1)

In addition to keeping our tests tight and concise, this approach gives some pretty nice output on failure.

If we were just beginning our implementation with a failing test, we’d see a multi-part failure like the following.

Failure/Error:
  expect {
    Project.generate(attrs)
  }.to change{ Project.count }.by(1).and \
       change{ User.count }.by(1)

     expected result to have changed by 1, but was changed by 0

  ...and:

     expected result to have changed by 1, but was changed by 0

List Available File Types For Ack

The ack utility allows you to filter the searched files based on file type. If you’d like to know all of the file types available, you can use the --help=types flag. This will include file types you’ve specified in your .ackrc file.

Here is a sample of some of the output.

$ ack --help=types
    ...
    --[no]css          .css .less .scss
    --[no]dart         .dart
    --[no]delphi       .pas .int .dfm .nfm .dof .dpk .dproj .groupproj .bdsgroup .bdsproj
    --[no]elisp        .el
    --[no]elixir       .ex .exs
    --[no]erlang       .erl .hrl
    --[no]fortran      .f .f77 .f90 .f95 .f03 .for .ftn .fpp
    --[no]go           .go
    --[no]groovy       .groovy .gtmpl .gpp .grunit .gradle
    --[no]haskell      .hs .lhs
    --[no]hh           .h
    --[no]html         .html .mustache .handlebars .tmpl
    --[no]jade         .jade
    --[no]java         .java .properties
    --[no]js           .js
    ...

See man ack for more details.