Create a zsh function

In a previous tip, I discussed how I analyze my shell history to determine which commands I use the most, just so I can then create short aliases for those commands to minimize keystrokes.

That command itself used a little awk and I always forget exactly how it works, so I decided to create an alias for it. Unfortunately, that alias was so long and difficult to read that I decided to refactor part of it into a shell function.

Since I use zsh on my systems, I needed to edit ~/.zshrc and add the following function:

function commands() {
  awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'
}

Then I create the alias I need to display the Top 10 most frequently used shell commands that I type, which is as follows:

alias topten="history | commands | sort -rn | head"

First, it shows the history, pipes the output to the commands function I created, then numerically sorts the output in reverse order, and displays only the first 10 results using head.

Now you can create zsh functions AND improve your workflow by analyzing your heavily used commands.

For more UNIX tips, please check out
Learning the UNIX Command Line.

Enjoy,
Chip