Command Snippet

[leopripos]

Description of the new feature/enhancement

Create command snippets like IDE snippets. Users can type something and then press tab to complete automatically. This is basically very simmilar with directory / file auto complete.

This will be very useful for long commands.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

User can configure their snippet in settings.json, for ex:

{
  "snippets" : [
      {
        "snippet": "cd-project-x",
        "command": "cd  D:\Projects\Project-X\"
      },
      {
        "snippet": "dn-build-xxx",
        "command": "dotnet build D:\Projects\Project-X\ --param1 --param2 --param3"
      }
  ]
}

[WSLUser]

From CLI perspective, there is PSReadline and bash_completions, and other shell related autocompletion software. From settings perpective, there's already a json schema that's added that VSCode will intelligently recognize and provide suggestions for. It even recently added trailing comma support.

[zadjii-msft]

So, this is probably something that would be best served by whatever commandline app you're using. As @WSLUser mentioned, you can (probably) configure PSReadline to do something like this for powershell, bash_completions for bash, and I'm sure zsh, fish, etc all have their own variants.

If your preferred shell is cmd.exe, you're probably out of luck :/

<shameless self plug>
Though, my preferred shell is cmd, so I wrote #keep as a utility for doing exactly the two things you've called out above: going to a directory, and doing something in that directory:

The docs aren't great, and it hasn't been updated in a while (but that's because I don't really think it needs to be), but that might scratch your itch.

</shameless self plug>

[WSLUser]

I believe Click was created for similar in cmd but the latest version is not stable and is abandoned. If you're not using in cmder though, it will be fine.

[rmansnacks]

I think there is important point that everyone is missing when telling us to rely on the shell completion functions. I want to be able to use snippets that are independent of the shell configuration. As an example, I often run awk '{ print $1 }' | while read... on server where I cannot create aliases or change any config, I would like to be able to type in 'a$1' for example and expand it to the predefined snippet. I'm often connecting to the systems where the completion is fully disabled and I run a lot of repetitive task that can't be scripted (terminal hijacking is always disabled). I'm really convinced this is a needed feature.

[pem884]

I agree with @rmansnacks - have heard of one or two peers using "Ditto" clipboard manager for storing snippets in kind of a global way. I wouldn't be sure if there are any drawbacks to it, but wanted to comment in case anyone, like me, comes back here looking for "Windows Terminal Snippets". Hope this helps someone.

[zadjii-msft]

We're also more general-purpose tracking this in #1595, so go toss your 👍 on that thread ☺️

[zadjii-msft]

You could also theoretically create a command like:

{ "command": { "action": "sendInput", "input": "awk '{ print $1 }' | while read...\r" }, "keys":"ctrl+a", "name": "a$1" },

and then you could use the command palette to send that snippet really simply. So you'd just press Ctrl+Shift+P (to open the command palette),a,$,1,enter and it'd send that snippet to the terminal. Or leave out the \r to just input it on the prompt, but not submit. Kinda similar, and shell/backend agnostic.

[pem884]

You could also theoretically create a command like:

{ "command": { "action": "sendInput", "input": "awk '{ print $1 }' | while read...\r" }, "keys":"ctrl+a", "name": "a$1" },

and then you could use the command palette to send that snippet really simply. So you'd just press Ctrl+Shift+P (to open the command palette),a,$,1,enter and it'd send that snippet to the terminal. Or leave out the \r to just input it on the prompt, but not submit. Kinda similar, and shell/backend agnostic.

Hey, that's brilliant - I'm excited to give it a try. Thanks so much, @zadjii-msft !!