Hst (the Picker)

HST is history search & picker in ncurses - also can pick other things

Though it can search and pick other things as well. Such as git branch | git checkout

You can also use it in multi select mode. Useful for select & copying some files etc.

Install

Mac Os X:

sudo pip install hst

Linux:

sudo pip install hst

Virtualenv

pip install hst

Usage

hst will grab your history by default.

hst

if you select something and press enter it will execute that command. If you press F6 it will open the command in editor ($EDITOR), any other key will be used to filter/search the results. hst will make your history lines unique and will favor the most used in search.

for example if you are using git commit 100 times a day and git push only once, when you type git, git commit will be in the first place.

you can also open a file in hst as an input, say you have a list of hosts and select one and ping

hst -i hosts.txt -e "ping"

you can also pipe in some input and wrap it with something.

git branch | hst -e "git checkout"

you can give a separator, for example, copy some python file, {} will be replaced with file.

find . -name '*.py' | hst -e 'cp {} /tmp/'

Contribute

All contributions are welcomed.

When you clone the repo, to check your changes and try, you can do this. Please don't send pull requests without testing.

git clone git://repoaddress/hst
cd hst
virtualenv env && source env/bin/activate
python setup.py develop
ln -s `which hst` /usr/local/bin/hst

now you can use your development version of hst in other terminal tabs etc.

please note that hst uses a single thread, and you shouldn't lock it for a long time, so if you do something like enhancing search results etc. you need to test it with a big file. some people's history is over 40k lines - eg. me.

License

Its MIT license.

Why

Because i live in the terminal, and hate trying to type something i've already typed. I've tried many things in the past and none of them worked well for me.

• cmd+R im never used to it (YMMV). it doesnt show what i am about select, just one line. most of the times, when i search for ssh, i want to see the most used ssh ones not the last ones. to find what i ssh'd i almost type all of the command. in hst i can just type ssh and see them - most used on the top.

• even if i could use cmd+R, it doesn't work for say git branches, or cd. hst is handy, you can pipe in any output.

• others: couldn't find a similar project

Similar & Notable Projects

• https://github.com/facebook/PathPicker you pipe in a bunch of paths and it shows in a nice ui.

• https://github.com/dvorka/hstr its a nice project but its search wants you to remember the commands eg: you cant type in "ss app1" for "ssh [email protected]" or for to find "cordova run ios" you cant type in "cord ios" you have to type in "cordova run"

• https://github.com/thoughtbot/pick it works great, but doesnt favor most used commands - well not designed to work with history - though you can just pipe in history eg: something like history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq | pick but i really can't type in ssh app1 and try to find the command, but ymmv

• https://github.com/junegunn/fzf again nice picker that you can pipe in history with history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq | fzf but doesn't favor most used commands, and i get lost while searching a command in my long history of commands. but its a nice generic tool for other purposes.

• https://github.com/mooz/percol generic fuzzy selector, you can use it to hack your history i think.

• https://github.com/peco/peco its one of the best tools that can work with history. use something like

$(history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq | peco)

and it nearly works like hst. fzf doesn't find "ssh [email protected]...." when i type in "ssh app1 ubuntu" finds some curl commands, but peco does a good job on finding. only you have to type in a few more things in peco since it doesn't favor the most used commands.

• https://github.com/garybernhardt/selecta

anyways, ymmv with other tools.

Missing Features - TODO's

• need some viewport kind of logic, say you hit pagedown, it should scroll down.
• ~~piping out the selected line doesn't work~~
• can't do fuzzy match eg: "cord" works for "cordova" but not "crd". it takes too long on long list of lines.
• ~~multiple selection~~
• pipe in with scores, eg. boost current branch when piping git branch etc.

How

uses Python and Curses library

Disclaimer

Its as is, if your hard disk is wiped out because of hst, i'm not responsible.