cheat

cheat allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.

cheat depends only on python and pip.

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:

# 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/

To see what cheatsheets are availble, run cheat -l.

Note that, while cheat was designed primarily for *nix system administrators, it is agnostic as to what content it stores. If you would like to use cheat to store notes on your favorite cookie recipes, feel free.

Installing

First install the required python dependencies with:

sudo pip install docopt pygments

Then, clone this repository, cd into it, and run:

sudo python setup.py install

Modifying Cheatsheets

The value of cheat is that it allows you to create your own cheatsheets - the defaults are meant to serve only as a starting point, and can and should be modified.

Cheatsheets are stored in the ~/.cheat/ directory, and are named on a per-keyphrase basis. In other words, the content for the tar cheatsheet lives in the ~/.cheat/tar file.

Provided that you have an EDITOR environment variable set, you may edit cheatsheets with:

cheat -e foo

If the 'foo' cheatsheet already exists, it will be opened for editing. Otherwise, it will be created automatically.

After you've customized your cheatsheets, I urge you to track ~/.cheat/ along with your dotfiles.

Configuring

Setting a DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR

Personal cheatsheets are saved in the ~/.cheat directory by default, but you can specify a different default by exporting a DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR environment variable:

export DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR=/path/to/my/cheats

Setting a CHEATPATH

You can additionally instruct cheat to look for cheatsheets in other directories by exporting a CHEATPATH environment variable:

export CHEATPATH=/path/to/my/cheats

You may, of course, append multiple directories to your CHEATPATH:

export CHEATPATH=$CHEATPATH:/path/to/more/cheats

You may view which directories are on your CHEATPATH with cheat -d.

Enabling Syntax Highlighting

cheat can apply syntax highlighting to your cheatsheets if so desired. To enable this feature, set a CHEATCOLORS environment variable:

export CHEATCOLORS=true

Related Projects

• lucaswerkmeister/cheats: An implementation of this concept in pure bash that also allows not only for numerical indexing of subcomands but also supports running commands interactively.

• jahendrie/cheat: A bash-only implementation that additionally allows for cheatsheets to be created and grep searched from the command-line. (jahendrie contributed key ideas to this project as well.)

• cheat RubyGem: A clever gem from 2006 that clearly had similar motivations. It is unclear whether or not it is currently maintained.