I do most of my automation and string manipulation scripting using Ruby. I know it’s not the most popular language these days, but it’s the one I know the best (thanks to my days of hacking on TextMate bundles) and it’s usually the fastest way for me to solve a problem. I have reams of snippets saved (and easily accessible with Snibbets) and thought I’d share a few that are useful for everyday scripting on macOS.
ruby, scripting, shell
Ok, this one will probably wrap up this little run of key binding tricks. It’s been fun, though, and I’d love to answer any questions I can in the forum.
keybindings, keyboard, markdown, searchlink, shortcuts
I guess it’s keybinding week this week. I’ve talked about the kill ring and repeat binding, but I’ve been digging in and revamping my own file, so I keep wanting to share some of the cooler things it can do because I know the file in the project is pretty massive and hard to parse.
keybindings, shortcuts, sublimetext, textmate, tips
Thanks to HoudahSpot for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! I’ve been using it for years and swear by it as a way to find files that Spotlight can’t, quickly and easily.
search, sponsor, spotlight
In Vim, most operations have can have a count specified in the keystrokes for the command, e.g. to delete 3 lines. You can do similar in any Cocoa text field (all Apple apps, plus most native apps). You just need to specify a keyboard shortcut to use before the count. Then you can hit that keyboard shortcut, type a number (X) and then hit a key or key combination to have that event repeated X times.
keybindings, keyboard, shortcuts, tricks
So you may have seen my KeyBindings project before. It’s an insanely large collection of keybinding tricks that work in any macOS text field. Well, any native cocoa field. You won’t have much luck in Electron or other non-native text editors. But for most uses, including in Safari, Mail, Notes, nvUltra, and most of the Markdown editors, the tricks work great. You can do things like adding TextMate-style ⌘+⏎ to any editor to create a new line no matter where your caret1 (cursor) is…
editor, keybindings, keyboard, tricks
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, a 1-year subscription ($96 value) for Kaleidoscope. There is no better program for diffing on macOS. From code to prose to images, see what changed with fine granularity. Plus great new Git integration!
giveaway, macos
This post will only be of interest to people writing scripts in Ruby. Seriously, zero utility if you’re not using Ruby. Though I would be curious how you accomplish the same thing in other languages like Rust and Python, because I’ve never gotten too deep with string manipulation in anything other than Ruby, Swift, and Objective-C. If you care to leave a comment with pointers, I’m all ears.
regex, ruby, scripting
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 2 licenses ($39.99 value each) for SpamSieve. SpamSieve provides powerful spam filtering for any email setup. It learns and adapts to your mail, so it’s able to block nearly all spam. Use it instead of or in addition to your current junk mail filtering.
giveaway, macos, mail
I decided to make a “Brett’s Favorites 2023” part 2. I missed a few things in the first list. This will be a shorter post, but should cover some gaps I left in the first one.
appreview, audiobook, books, cooking, macos, reading, review, solutions
