Purpose

It is frustrating when we want to find some sophisticated unix commands right in the terminal. Right now, the process probably likes this:

• need some commands
• google / duckduckgo / wiki to find the some probably broken command
• copy and paste the command line
• tweak the command until it work, otherwise go back to step 2
• forget the knowledge days later

This process sucks. How about we keep commands where it belongs to -- terminal:

• Query for commands solving the problem right in the terminal
• Add your smart solutions back right from terminal
• Leverage the community power such as commandlinefu.com

There comes ask, you could ask it for commands:

ask query random number
[1]: strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo
  Generate a random password 30 characters long
[2]: Random Number Between 1 And X
  echo $[RANDOM%X+1]

You could paste the commands right in the terminal:

ask exec 2
echo $[RANDOM%X+1]

You could share more commands right from terminal with your $EDITOR:

ask add

##Install

• curl -L https://raw.github.com/lovvvve/ask/master/install.sh | sh

Details

More useful options are:

$ ask --help
usage: ask [action] [options] 

actions:
  add             open your $EDITOR, edit and submit your last command(!!).
  exec <id>       exec the command with given id.
  query <words>   query for commands containing the keywords.
  copy <id>      paste in the command with given id.

options:
  --local         query local database
  --remote        query remote database
  --desc          add description right from terminal

The structure of local cache directory(First Edition)

Like git, ask cab be total local. By default, all the commands will be cached in ~/.ask direcotry.

The structure of ~/.ask directory will similar to a local .git repository.

|-- index
`-- objects
    |-- 0.json
    |-- 1.json
    |-- … … 
    |-- info
    `-- pack

RoadMap

On version 1.0

• develop a local storage engine
• implement local ask add, ask exec <id>, ask query 'grep'
• use your $EDITOR to add commands to your local storage engine
• build a server model backed by postgreSQL
• build a server API interface

How to Contribute

We follow the npm code styles.

Contributors

• yangchenyun [email protected]
• kuno [email protected]