cheat

cheat

Use

cheat

Example

The next time you're forced to disarm a nuclear weapon without consulting Google, you may run:

cheat tar

You will be presented with a cheatsheet resembling the following:

# To extract an uncompressed archive:
tar -xvf '/path/to/foo.tar'

To extract a .gz archive:
tar -xzvf '/path/to/foo.tgz'
To create a .gz archive:
tar -czvf '/path/to/foo.tgz' '/path/to/foo/'
To extract a .bz2 archive:
tar -xjvf '/path/to/foo.tgz'
To create a .bz2 archive:
tar -cjvf '/path/to/foo.tgz' '/path/to/foo/'

Installing

cheat

PATH

Configuring

conf.yml

cheat

mkdir -p ~/.config/cheat && cheat --init > ~/.config/cheat/conf.yml

By default, the config file is assumed to exist on an XDG-compliant configuration path like

~/.config/cheat/conf.yml

CHEAT_CONFIG_PATH

export CHEAT_CONFIG_PATH="~/.dotfiles/cheat/conf.yml"

Cheatsheets

Cheatsheets are plain-text files with no file extension, and are named according to the command used to view them:

cheat tar     # file is named "tar"
cheat foo/bar # file is named "bar", in a "foo" subdirectory

Cheatsheet text may optionally be preceeded by a YAML frontmatter header that assigns tags and specifies syntax:

---
syntax: javascript
tags: [ array, map ]
---
// To map over an array:
const squares = [1, 2, 3, 4].map(x => x * x);

The

cheat

cheat

Cheatpaths

Cheatsheets are stored on "cheatpaths", which are directories that contain cheatsheets. Cheatpaths are specified in the

conf.yml

It can be useful to configure

cheat

# conf.yml:
# ...
cheatpaths:
  - name: community                   # a name for the cheatpath
    path: ~/documents/cheat/community # the path's location on the filesystem
    tags: [ community ]               # these tags will be applied to all sheets on the path
    readonly: true                    # if true, `cheat` will not create new cheatsheets here


name: personal
path: ~/documents/cheat/personal  # this is a separate directory and repository than above
tags: [ personal ]
readonly: false                   # new sheets may be written here
...

The

readonly

cheat

If a user attempts to edit a cheatsheet on a read-only cheatpath,

cheat

Directory-scoped Cheatpaths

At times, it can be useful to closely associate cheatsheets with a directory on your filesystem.

cheat

.cheat

.cheat

Usage

To view a cheatsheet:

cheat tar      # a "top-level" cheatsheet
cheat foo/bar  # a "nested" cheatsheet

To edit a cheatsheet:

cheat -e tar     # opens the "tar" cheatsheet for editing, or creates it if it does not exist
cheat -e foo/bar # nested cheatsheets are accessed like this

To view the configured cheatpaths:

cheat -d

To list all available cheatsheets:

cheat -l

To list all cheatsheets that are tagged with "networking":

cheat -l -t networking

To list all cheatsheets on the "personal" path:

cheat -l -p personal

To search for the phrase "ssh" among cheatsheets:

cheat -s ssh

To search (by regex) for cheatsheets that contain an IP address:

cheat -r -s '(?:[0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}'

Flags may be combined in intuitive ways. Example: to search sheets on the "personal" cheatpath that are tagged with "networking" and match a regex:

cheat -p personal -t networking --regex -s '(?:[0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}'

Advanced Usage

Shell autocompletion is currently available for

bash

fish

zsh

Additionally,

cheat

fzf

1. Ensure that

   fzf

   is available on your

   $PATH

2. Set an envvar:

   export CHEAT_USE_FZF=true