Over the last year or so, I had very slowly begun to adopt scripting for tasks that could be automated. It helped to eliminate the drudgery of repetition. I could create .bat files for simple command line activities and if necessary, I could invoke Powershell to handle some more complex things like retrieving information from a SQL database.
Those skills are not necessarily applicable to a MacBook. For the first time in my life, I find myself needing to create bash scripts in Vim. Powershell was nice in the Microsoft ecosystem. Lots of helpful commands, and with access to the .NET Framework, there is no shortage of capability. Learning the simplest of scripts has shown me that the power available to bash makes it more than formidable.
One of my first difficulties with bash was also one of my first difficulties with Powershell. You create functions and aliases in this terminal, quit, and when you open a new terminal, all your work is gone. Since I had experienced this when learning Powershell, I knew that there was no way all those Unix and Linux admins were running around typing the same code day in and day out to make their lives easier (which by definition would actually be more difficult with time and experience making the same old code a drudgery).
Fortunately, the solution is practically the same: a profile. In this case, .bash_profile is the file you have to edit/create.
We're going to use TextEdit to create our file.
Those skills are not necessarily applicable to a MacBook. For the first time in my life, I find myself needing to create bash scripts in Vim. Powershell was nice in the Microsoft ecosystem. Lots of helpful commands, and with access to the .NET Framework, there is no shortage of capability. Learning the simplest of scripts has shown me that the power available to bash makes it more than formidable.
One of my first difficulties with bash was also one of my first difficulties with Powershell. You create functions and aliases in this terminal, quit, and when you open a new terminal, all your work is gone. Since I had experienced this when learning Powershell, I knew that there was no way all those Unix and Linux admins were running around typing the same code day in and day out to make their lives easier (which by definition would actually be more difficult with time and experience making the same old code a drudgery).
Fortunately, the solution is practically the same: a profile. In this case, .bash_profile is the file you have to edit/create.
We're going to use TextEdit to create our file.
- Open a terminal and paste the following: open -e .bash_profile
- Add any aliases, functions, or Environment changes (PATH modifications?) you want to have for your use in the terminal.
- Save the file and the next time you use terminal, your system will be set as you like it.
