Show HN: Hacker News without leaving your terminal (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

25 pointsjeybalachandran14y ago27 comments

I put this together since I find myself switching away from the terminal to see if anything new popped up in HN. There might be similar ones out there, didn't bother looking. It was a quick experiment, which might end up with a few more features.

27 comments

Nic014y ago

I used pkrumins ncurses hacker-top program, it's nice. https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top Sometime it has a bug to retrieve news, and I fixed it. https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top

Certainly a nice way to follow HN, the only advantage with the website, it to have gray links on already visited links. That's mainly why I don't use it anymore.

klapinat0r14y ago

A "solution" to this could be a small local cache or sqlite db. Say you use Chrome, then you could have a cronjob which checks your history (given you're not in cognito) sqlite db for links in your last `$ hackernews` run. Not saying it's an adequate way to solve it, but it certainly is a hack ;)

makecheck14y ago

Here's a couple of edits that will pull colors from the 256-color (XTerm) palette and make the titles bold:

  blue_highlight=`echo "\033[0;38;5;68m"`                                                                                                      
  brown_highlight=`echo "\033[0;1;38;5;202m"`
  . . .
  . . . (end of script)
  echo "\033[0m"

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Thanks, fixed in master. Also updated so only uses colors via a -c argument.

spatten14y ago

When you say "If you're terminal is awesome, you can ⌘-click on the links to open them in a browser.", what kind of awesome do I need?

I'm running plain old terminal on OS X.

(oh, and not to be picky, but that should be "your", not "you're")

kip_14y ago

I'm running plain old terminal on OS X Lion and if I hold down the ⌘-key and double click, the link in the terminal opens in my default browser.

makecheck14y ago

MacTerm does this, for one.

http://www.macterm.net/

Groxx14y ago

They probably mean iTerm2 (which is a definite upgrade, worth it if you haven't tried it)

xdissent14y ago

Plain old terminal works for me, but you have to ⌘-double-click.

brandur14y ago

iTerm2 for OS X will do this: http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home

xdissent14y ago

You're altering the terminal colors without resetting them. You should output a reset code after you're done (\033[0m IIRC?) or (drastically) issue `reset`. Although, a blue terminal is kind of a nice change.

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Fixed, thanks!

dangrossman14y ago

I tried it on CentOS (RHEL) 5.6

    [admin@gold admin]# hackernews
    sed: invalid option -- E

    [admin@gold admin]# sed --version
    GNU sed version 4.1.5

nzmsv14y ago

Changing "sed -E" to "sed -r" and all instances of "==" to "=" makes this script run on my Debian system. Unfortunately, it leaves the terminal blue when it is done.

makecheck14y ago

If you add a line like the following to the end of the script, any color changes should be undone:

    echo "\033[0m"

Also, I believe Debian's /bin/sh is "dash" whereas it is "bash" on most other systems. You could change your copy of the script's header to use "/bin/bash" instead of "sh" (assuming that bash is installed too), which is easier than fixing equal-signs and such.

As far as the original code is concerned, using "perl" may be slightly more portable than "sed -E".

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

There is a patch in master to support both Debian and Mac OS X. OS X doesn't use GNU sed which was the source of the problem.

lastsurvivor14y ago

same error here.

makecheck14y ago

Pretty neat.

Note that in order to work on Mac OS X, the word "wget" should change to "curl" in the script. (Otherwise it works exactly as-is.)

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Great catch, I have wget installed via brew so overlooked that, I'll create a patch shortly.

burgerbrain14y ago

Not to be rude, but what does this get me over elinks?

JacobIrwin14y ago

Cool.. Here I was thinking the HN web app was as simple and plain as I could view the feeds..

zx2c414y ago

Dear Sir,

You have committed an egregious atrocity: you parse XML with a regex.

Please read this classic post: http://goo.gl/wPtKX

Thank you, Internet

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

I was counting on someone pointing me to that. Well aware of it and appreciate the reality check. I did this as a quick-and-dirty solution, I haven't tried parsing XML in shell, ever. Do you have suggestions?

tuananh14y ago

kind of cool but in the end, you need to open your browser anyway !!

makecheck14y ago

Here is one way to force your browser to open a URL by entering a terminal command:

    echo 'open location "http://my.domain.com/some/file.html"' | osascript

fceccon14y ago

You can also open an url with:

   open http://my.domain.com/some/file.html

lightyrs14y ago

This is dangerously good. Thanks?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

27 comments

Nic014y ago

I used pkrumins ncurses hacker-top program, it's nice. https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top Sometime it has a bug to retrieve news, and I fixed it. https://github.com/Nic0/hacker-top

Certainly a nice way to follow HN, the only advantage with the website, it to have gray links on already visited links. That's mainly why I don't use it anymore.

klapinat0r14y ago

makecheck14y ago

Here's a couple of edits that will pull colors from the 256-color (XTerm) palette and make the titles bold:

  blue_highlight=`echo "\033[0;38;5;68m"`                                                                                                      
  brown_highlight=`echo "\033[0;1;38;5;202m"`
  . . .
  . . . (end of script)
  echo "\033[0m"

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Thanks, fixed in master. Also updated so only uses colors via a -c argument.

spatten14y ago

When you say "If you're terminal is awesome, you can ⌘-click on the links to open them in a browser.", what kind of awesome do I need?

I'm running plain old terminal on OS X.

(oh, and not to be picky, but that should be "your", not "you're")

kip_14y ago

I'm running plain old terminal on OS X Lion and if I hold down the ⌘-key and double click, the link in the terminal opens in my default browser.

makecheck14y ago

MacTerm does this, for one.

http://www.macterm.net/

Groxx14y ago

They probably mean iTerm2 (which is a definite upgrade, worth it if you haven't tried it)

xdissent14y ago

Plain old terminal works for me, but you have to ⌘-double-click.

brandur14y ago

iTerm2 for OS X will do this: http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home

xdissent14y ago

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Fixed, thanks!

dangrossman14y ago

I tried it on CentOS (RHEL) 5.6

    [admin@gold admin]# hackernews
    sed: invalid option -- E

    [admin@gold admin]# sed --version
    GNU sed version 4.1.5

nzmsv14y ago

Changing "sed -E" to "sed -r" and all instances of "==" to "=" makes this script run on my Debian system. Unfortunately, it leaves the terminal blue when it is done.

makecheck14y ago

If you add a line like the following to the end of the script, any color changes should be undone:

    echo "\033[0m"

As far as the original code is concerned, using "perl" may be slightly more portable than "sed -E".

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

There is a patch in master to support both Debian and Mac OS X. OS X doesn't use GNU sed which was the source of the problem.

lastsurvivor14y ago

same error here.

makecheck14y ago

Pretty neat.

Note that in order to work on Mac OS X, the word "wget" should change to "curl" in the script. (Otherwise it works exactly as-is.)

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

Great catch, I have wget installed via brew so overlooked that, I'll create a patch shortly.

burgerbrain14y ago

Not to be rude, but what does this get me over elinks?

JacobIrwin14y ago

Cool.. Here I was thinking the HN web app was as simple and plain as I could view the feeds..

zx2c414y ago

Dear Sir,

You have committed an egregious atrocity: you parse XML with a regex.

Please read this classic post: http://goo.gl/wPtKX

Thank you, Internet

jeybalachandranOP14y ago

tuananh14y ago

kind of cool but in the end, you need to open your browser anyway !!

makecheck14y ago

Here is one way to force your browser to open a URL by entering a terminal command:

    echo 'open location "http://my.domain.com/some/file.html"' | osascript

fceccon14y ago

You can also open an url with:

   open http://my.domain.com/some/file.html

lightyrs14y ago

This is dangerously good. Thanks?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse