Simple note taking from the command line

[lucb1e]

So if I'm reading this correctly, you need to quote your text, and it can't be multi-line... why not this:

    alias notes='cat >> ~/notes'

Just hit ctrl+c (stops cat) or ctrl+d (signals EOF) when you're done writing. No quoting, special characters that might act funny, line or size limits, etc.

[dylanpyle]

I've been using a variation on this for a bit:

    (echo && date && cat) >> ~/notes.txt

Adds a newline and datestamp above each note group

[jasonm23]

Depending on the shell in use C-c (will|won't) write to the redirected output file.

C-d remains constant, but it's irritating that there's no way to consistently abort.

To deal with this our edit target needs to be a temporary file which we subsequently bless, append to the notes file and then trash.

Keeping notes open in an editor buffer that I can jump to easily, and manually:

>> notes.md

From the command line gains me all the utility I need while using a modern machine and zsh.

Of course, if I time travel, the GP trick is useful on old ultrix machines.

[corobo]

Anyone else use http://jrnl.sh/ ?

I prefer it over echoing into a file because it has more advanced display features - such as by date - and topics (hashtags [don't forget to escape the hash!], or @tags)

Got the journal files stored in Dropbox so they're everywhere I am

[balladeer]

I have it setup but don’t use it as my main notes app. That would still be Simplenote (with Notational Velocity on desktop).

Mainly because I figured would rather use GUI for notes on both desktop and mobile. Maybe one of these days I should give Standard Notes a try (https://standardnotes.org). It’s OSS and client side encrypted (afaik).

[pwelch]

Yes! Jrnl is awesome and I've been using it for awhile now. Highly recommend it.

[overcast]

oooo good find! thank you.

[pweissbrod]

Not as simple but well worth the extra weight would be org-mode. I personally find the vim-orgmode a balance between the full power of org vs my reliance on vim for day-to-day operations but I must admit I'm sometimes jealous of the power I see in emacs for this.

[uep]

I have been a long-time Emacs user and I finally just started learning org-mode. I wish I had started earlier. Previously, I had used Zim to do my note-taking, but org-mode is just so much better in every way.

I have a feeling it's going to be my gateway into more heavy LaTeX usage for all manner of documents. The ability to evaluate code during document generation is a big deal to me.

[JoshMnem]

Another vote for Org Mode. I just added this idea from the post to my laptop (adding a timestamp and sending it into an org-mode file):

    note() {
        echo "`date +%s`\t$1" >> ~/org/unsorted-notes.org
    }

[lysium]

Sounds as if you will love spacemacs!

[Fletch137]

I like to use: `alias sp='vim ~/notes/scratchpad-$(date +"%m-%d-%Y-%T")'`

[dheera]

I use

    #!/bin/bash
    mkdir -p ~/Dropbox/scratch/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
    vim ~/Dropbox/scratch/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S")

for convenient sorting by date, and throw stuff in Dropbox for automatic syncing across my machines.

[Diederich]

This is neat, and there's a lot of interesting comments and pointers elsewhere in these comment threads.

What I've been doing (for the last 25 years or so) is simple. I always keep a window open, visible in all virtual desktops, on the bottom right of my screen, with: vi ~/notes/notes

For somewhat less than the last 25 years, ~/notes is an encrypted git repo. I have a cron that, minutely, adds, commits, pulls and pushes to a couple of my servers on the Internet.

I generally have one of these for each company I work for, and another one that I've used for all things personal.

[perryprog]

Do you have code for this on GitHub?

[cat199]

or just learn ed/ex, etc.

just as fast and you can actually edit when needed.

    $ ed ~/.todo
    a
    this is a new bloat 
    .
    s/bloat/note/
    this is a new note
    w
    q
    $ cat ~/.todo
    this is a new note
    $ ed ~/.todo
    19
    a
    this is another note.
    it goes across more lines.
    woo!
    .
    w
    q
    $

[rhizome]

Take note, people: ed is the standard text editor.

[hathym]

now go and pitch VCs for you notes taking app

[lillesvin]

Why .md when you're inputting the command as plain text without any markdown?

[delinka]

Why not just have the flexibility of adding markdown whenever you feel like it (and not when you don't)? Now, you've got a file a markdown renderer can render whether or not you used markdown.

[lottin]

Do you really need a function for that?

cat >> ~/notes

does the same thing.

[ConfucianNardin]

This will work fine until the day when you mistype >> into >, and all your notes are gone.

[tyingq]

rlwrap cat >> ~/notes

Would give you some rudimentary readline editing capability.

[nsb1]

Small improvements: - No quotes needed - Just type 'notes' alone to less the file

notes() {

        if [ "$1" == "" ]; then

                less $HOME/notes.md

        else

                echo $@ >> $HOME/notes.md

        fi

}

[vacri]

Combination of your improvements and the first commentor's in the link

- 'notes' by itself views the file (interactive shell only)

- 'notes' with args, the args are appended to file (original function)

- 'notes' with heredoc (or any piped data) allows for multiline notes

    notes() {
      if [ -n "$1" ]; then
        echo $@ >> "$HOME/notes.md"
      else
        # detect if we're in a tty or a pipe
        if [ -t 0 ]; then
          less "$HOME/notes.md"
        else
          cat - >> "$HOME/notes.md"
        fi
      fi
    }



    usage:
    $ notes 1
    $ notes 1 2 3
    $ notes <<EOF
    > this is a 
    > multiline note
    > EOF
    $ uptime | notes
    $ notes
    (opens less with the following content)
    1
    1 2 3
    this is a 
    multiline note
     23:22:06 up 3 days, 11:41,  1 user,  load average: 0.25, 0.15, 0.26

[hk__2]

You still need quotes to prevent the shell from expanding $variables and globs. It’ll also mangle your spaces (try with `notes foo<space><space>bar`: it saves it as "foo<space>bar") due to the $@.

[tincholio]

This probably sets the lowest bar for note taking...

[digitalsushi]

It's like the camera-you-have being best - if my fingers remember how to take notes, I'll take notes.

[jaddood]

This is extremely similar to the 'microscopic planner for shell' that I wrote and often use.

Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126006

I also add a few aliases to make it even quicker:

  alias mcr='mplan create'
  alias msh='mplan show'
  alias mrm='mplan remove'
  alias mclear='mplan remove \*'

This will provide (in my opinion) both a very simple way to take notes and a somewhat mature and usable note taking 'program'.

[hk__2]

> Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126006

Direct link: https://github.com/jad-issa/mplan-sh. Why post a link to a 6-months years-old HN submission with no comments?

[vermaden]

Such 'notes' function can seem 'useful' at first glance, but how You gonna 'organize these notes, for example after You have used it for about a year, or several years?

I prefer other approach.

Everytime I get to know some new switch for a command, or new use for them, or even a new command, I create ~/man/command file with examples and commends inside, like ~/man/tar or ~/man/gstat or ~/man/xorg.conf.

This way its already organized and you can grep -r 'something' ~/man for the thing you need.

My $0.02.

[talideon]

I have this: https://github.com/kgaughan/dotfiles/blob/master/local/bin/n...

It allows the editing of notes for a given day, listing of all notes, and display of a note for a given day, defaulting to today if no date is provided.

I keep meaning to add support for RCS or some other form of basic version control, but it's never been that much of an issue.

[reacharavindh]

Would any such note-taking solution work across several ssh sessions?

I'm a small scale sysadmin, SSHing into multiple servers configured by my predecessors. I'd love to be able to some command | notes.txt or whatever. And no, I don't have my home directory mounted at all locations the same way. I even need to login as different user for different machines. The command factor is my Mac and Terminal.app

[amdavidson]

I'm going to assume that you can edit .bashrc for these as that's the premise from the original article.

You could adjust it so that it uses a central notes store on one ssh host pretty easily with something like:

  notes() {
      echo $1 | ssh user@remotehost "cat >> ~/notes.md"
  }

then you probably need something like

  read_notes() {
      ssh user@remotehost "cat ~/notes.md" | more
  }

[catullus]

With a few more features, but similar in spirit, is Gina Trapani's todo.txt: https://lifehacker.com/5155450/todotxt-cli-manages-your-task...

[mdhughes]

Well, I got nerd-sniped by this, since lately I've been dumping text in Apple Notes which isn't really suitable for everything.

http://markdamonhughes.com/thoughtpy/

Kindly email me bugs, not pull requests.

[zer0th]

I've been doing something fairly similar for years now.

You can read about my method here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10997410

[Flimm]

I have a very similar script that lets me write notes to a file with today's filestamp. I use it to keep track of what I've done on which days.

[stevekemp]

Yup, I have a script `worklog` which boils down to this:

    #!/bin/sh
    mkdir ~/.worklog || true
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
       cat ~/.worklog/$(date +%w).md
    else
       echo "$(date): $*" >> ~/.worklog/$(date +%w).md
    fi

That gives a file per-week which can either have contents appended to it, or viewed. Usage is the obvious:

    $ worklog  "I did some stuff"
    $ worklog  [shows the output]

[indigodaddy]

You could decentish vi bindings within this by using vi mode for bash I'd guess? I'd probably usually just end up vim notes.md5 TBH.