Emacs: ESHELL demo

Here I showcase the true power of Eshell, which is the fact that it is interpreting Elisp. I demo the extensions I have programmed for it, showing how Eshell seamlessly integrates with the rest of Emacs. // Check my dotemacs for more: protesilaos.co...
Also refer to these valuable resources:
Mike Zamansky's video demo that also shows how to program an Eshell switcher: cestlaz.github...
Howard Abrahams' video that covers the features of Eshell: • Introduction to EShell
Pierre Neidhardt's detailed blog post on the pros and cons of Eshell: ambrevar.xyz/e...

[@mpereira1]

I've been using Eshell exclusively as my shell since 2017 and was still able to learn a few things with this video. Thanks Prot!

[@protesilaos]

@Murilo Pereira Thanks! I feel Eshell has a lot of potential. It can basically be customised in every way. The true Emacs style.

[@mzamansky]

Hey Prot - thanks for the shoutout!!! Love your videos and also the themes you wrote.

[@protesilaos]

@Mike Zamansky You are welcome! Given this opportunity, I wish to thank you for your videos. There is always something new to learn.

[@SenthilBabuji]

I feel this is one of the most underrated channels. Thanks Prot for providing great tips and tricks.

[@protesilaos]

@Senthil Babu You are welcome!

[@ryanleemartin7758]

This channel is very nice indeed!

[@protesilaos]

Haha, you know how it is!

[@jeongpyolee717]

Love Love dear Prot! I missed you so long so much. Nice to see you again!

[@jeongpyolee717]

I want study ancient Greek to read ancient origin text of Plato and Aristotle, Can you give me advice on my quest? 1. to learn first modern Greek language to read ancient Greek? (this guy's suggestion kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5bPfmWwrttoi9U ) 2. to concentrate directly on etymology of ancient greek word study and grammar? 3. new way of study(your point of view?)

[@protesilaos]

@Jeongpyo Lee I think that for your study purposes you should treat Ancient and Modern Greek as two distinct languages. Obviously if you know one you can learn the other, but there still are considerable differences between the two that would greatly complicate your task. I am not aware of a language learning programme that I could recommend. Sorry! What I do know is that the Loeb Classical Library has publications that put English and Ancient Greek side-by-side. The Nicomachean Ethics, for example: archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.183486/mode/2up

[@jeongpyolee717]

@@protesilaos Thank you, Thank you, dear my Prot, I will leave more comments in your related topic video, that is in kzbin.info/www/bejne/p4XRlJZooa5phas [ Vlog: Emacs mindset and Unix philosophy ] because that is good place to my quest. Integrity and Unix philosophy

[@protesilaos]

@Jeongpyo Lee Thanks! I replied there.

[@amaxamon]

Thank you for making this channel! I've made more progress since finding your channel than in the months before!

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome!

[@sriharshabhat1805]

This is the great channel to educate myself about Emacs, since lock down I have been watching prot videos my practical Emacs skill is really increasing. Thanks

[@protesilaos]

@sriharsha bhat Thank you! As for the events surrounding the pandemic, I wish you "bon courage!", as the French would say.

[@joaopedrodeamorimpaula8965]

for now i still use a shell with tmux alongside Emacs and i don't think that will ever change. that said, i might look into eshell for running commands on projects, like a continuous compilation buffer or use eshell as a "REPL" for compiled languages. your video gave me motivation for looking deeper and more carefully into eshell. thank you!

[@joaopedrodeamorimpaula8965]

oh, quick question: are you back to using ivy? or is that icomplete with your configurations?

[@protesilaos]

@João Pedro de Amorim Since you already start with tmux, eshell could indeed cover the niche of the REPL with whatever little piece of extra Elisp you may need for it. What really matters is to use the right tool for the job. With regard to Icomplete, this is what I am still using and am very happy with it. I have lots of little additions for it covering a broad range of cases (check my dotemacs for the specifics) while I also rely on some new packages like "icomplete-vertical' and "orderless". The latter is a super-powerful completion style for out-of-order matching of regular expressions (supports flex, initialisms, literal, regexp, etc.). Both packages are from the same author: github.com/oantolin/

[@joaopedrodeamorimpaula8965]

@@protesilaos thank you! i will definitely check out your configuration for icomplete! when i started emacs i just installed a bunch of packages without really looking into the defaults, which i should have done, and now i am on the journey of replacing most of the packages for their default counterpart. emacs is like a book that never ends, there is always a new story to discover and be amazed at!

[@protesilaos]

@João Pedro de Amorim Feel welcome to contact me via email if you have any questions, because I might miss the comments here (KZbin is not reliable with its notifications). My dotemacs consists, in large part, of configurations for built-in libraries. I find that they get the job done, though there obviously is room for improvement. For me this is an opportunity to learn some Elisp by trying to implement what I think is missing. You are right: there is always something new to learn and this experience itself is fascinating!

[@dommynovvy7568]

C-x C-j... how did I not know about that?!?!? Thanks again Prot! "This is very nice indeed"!

[@protesilaos]

@dommy novvy You are welcome! dired-jump is one of my favourite commands.

[@richardfrangie3518]

Hi, where are you from? I'm from Venezuela. I understood you very well. Other channels that talk about Emacs and are native speakers, it's very difficult for me to understand them but with you I did well, thanks bro.

[@protesilaos]

I am from Greece. I have seen pictures of Venezuela. It is a very beautiful country!

[@TheGrinDeg]

Great video as always!

[@protesilaos]

@GrinDeg Thanks for watching!

[@Wool314]

Informative and inspiring, I am grateful for this demo!

[@protesilaos]

Thank you!

[@xged.]

This is nice indeed

[@protesilaos]

Indeed!

[@romanrudakov8175]

Is there a way to use while loop in eshell like in regular bash?

[@protesilaos]

@Roman Rudakov No, not that I am aware of. As an alternative, you can write Elisp commands that can then be called directly from the Eshell prompt. For example `(defun my-eshell-fynction ...)' will let you run `my-eshell-function' even without the outer parentheses. If, however, you need Bash's methods but still want to configure things like I did here, then take a look at `M-x shell': this is standard Bash minus the terminal capabilities (so no tmux, vim, htop…). It is also implemented as a buffer and can be tweaked to do basically the same things I demonstrated here. But it cannot call Elisp functions directly (such as `dired'), which means that its integration with the rest of Emacs is not as good as with Eshell.

[@joaopedrodeamorimpaula8965]

to add to prot's answer, there is also `M-x term` and `M-x ansi-term` (they are essentially the same thing) that differ from `M-x shell` because they are terminal emulators written in elisp, while `M-x shell` is a subshell running in `comint-mode`. for that reason, in the former it creates a subprocess running your and all pressed keys are sent directly to the subprocess, and the Emacs buffer is just a way to present the output; while in the latter, you have a bit better Emacs integration since it is a "child" major mode of `comint-mode` but some of the functionalities of your shell running in a "proper" terminal emulator might not work here, or have some issues. all three (and i guess you could throw `vterm` together with `term` and `ansi-term`, since it is also a terminal emulator) approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, it is up to each user to try each one and use whichever adapts better to its workflow.

[@protesilaos]

@João Pedro de Amorim Thanks for this! Yes, I would also group vterm together with {ansi-,}term.

[@ianpan0102]

Hi Prot, an unrelated question here: Lately I've heard that straight.el can increase startup performance along with other goodies for us emacsers. Have you considered trying it out? I know that it integrates with use-package well too

[@protesilaos]

@ianpan870102 Good point! Better startup speed is always nice to have, though I am mostly fascinated by all the other features, such as reproducibility, patching the source code, contributing upstream… I feel the built-in package manager leaves much to be desired. The only reason I have not converted to straight yet is the lack of time. I have been working on lots of other things… On another note, one may also be interested in foregoing all Emacs-specific package managers, opting instead for something like Guix. Though I understand this only scales well once you do the same for all OS-level packages, which is not as simple as changing something in Emacs.

[@ezio934]

Awesome content. Subbed! ^_^

[@protesilaos]

@Ezio Thanks!