Working with Linux

Chapter 2. Productive Shells – Reinvent the way
you work
In this chapter, we will start off with a short introduction to Vim and look at the most basic commands
to help you get started with basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations. We will then
upgrade the shell interpreter to zsh and also give it superpowers with the awesome oh-my-zsh
framework. We will look at some basic regular expressions such as searching some text using grep.
Then, we will unleash the power of Unix pipes and run embedded commands using subshells. The
later part of the chapter will help us understand how we can boost productivity and automate a lot of
our day-to-day work by showing some of the more advanced shell scripting techniques.
In this chapter, we will cover the following:
Working with Vim
Managing zsh using the oh-my-zsh framework
Writing and running super powerful one line commands using pipes and subshells
Exploring the shell scripting libraries
We will focus on editing files. For that we need to choose a file editor. There are a bunch of options
but considering that the fastest way to edit files is, of course, without leaving the terminal. We
recommend Vim. Vim is an awesome editor! It has a lot of configuration options with a huge
community that has produced lots of plugins and beautiful themes. It also features advanced text
editing, which makes it ultra-configurable and super-fast.
So, let's proceed. Open the terminator and type sudo apt install vim to install Vim: