Over the last few months I've started to modernize many of the typical command line interface (cli) tools I use. In some cases I replaced graphical user interface (GUI) apps with simple interactive cli tools.

List of cli tools

bat Replaces cat . Has out of the box syntax highlighting (if unless output is piped), as well as automated paging.

exa Replaces ls. Provides nicer output colouring.

fd Replaces find. Is a lot faster due to parallel folder traversal.

fzf Very fast fuzzy finder. Pipe any line based output to it to have interactive fuzzy find.

httpie Replaces curl. Provides many conveniences when it comes to specifying prams or addressing hosts.

lazygit Replaces Github Desktop. Interactive git management on the command line. Can be used without a mouse.

neovim Replaces vim. Ships with lua scripting support, integrated LSP interface (from 0.5.0+), lot of fast and async plugins.

rg Replaces grep. Fast. Very very fast.

starship Fancy prompt.

visidata

In addition I found more comprehensive lists from Jakub and Sebastian Witowski.

Defaults and fullback's

In the case of ls and cat you might not want to change your muscle memory, specially since many systems may not have exa and bat installed by default.

So im aliasing them as follows:

# if bat is available use it instead of cat
if hash bat 2>/dev/null; then
  alias cat="bat"
fi

# if exa is available use it instead of ls
if hash exa 2>/dev/null; then
  alias ls="exa"
fi

Something extra

fd and fzf are so fast that they allow for new work follows. I've combined them into a bash function I call cdcd which allows quick directory change via fuzzy find (up to 4 levels deep).

if hash fd 2>/dev/null; then
  if hash fzf 2>/dev/null; then
    function cdcd {
      # pick a directory via fuzzy find
      dir=$(fd -t directory -d 4 | fzf)
      # cd into it
      cd "$dir"
    }
  fi
fi