What are the 10 commands you need to be really productive?

[frosencrantz]

I just watched a video @saulpw did with @cpcloud https://youtu.be/RSDkLGjj3-E about using https://github.com/visidata/vdsql . Saul was on the keyboard. Thanks for doing the video, I'm looking forward to trying out vdsql.

Somewhere in the middle Saul says:

okay for my money there's actually only about 10 commands that you need to be actually really productive

Saul what are the top 10-commands? I'd also be interested in what other people think too.

[saulpw]

Everyone will probably have their own specific 10, but here are mine:

1. freq table: Shift+F
2. aggregation: + on columns before doing freq table
3. hide column: -
4. sort: [ or ]
5. select rows by example: ,
6. bulk select/toggle/unselect rows: gs/gt/gu
7. filter selected rows only: " (dup-sheet)
8. create a new column by Python expr: =
9. bulk edit all selected: ge
10. commit updates to my personal database: z Ctrl+S

Honorable mention for syscopy-cell or z Shift+Y, that copies a cell to the system clipboard (so it can be pasted into another window).

[ajkerrigan]

Everyone will probably have their own specific 10, but here are mine:

Yeah this feels pretty personal and at least somewhat task-dependent. I'd have some overlap with Saul's but with more of a skew toward slinging nested JSON. Maybe...

1. column-wise expansion of nested data (expand-col*, contract-col*, and built-in/custom variations on those)
2. row-wise expansion of nested data (unfurl-col)
3. create a new column by Python expr (=)
4. rename column (^)
5. hide column (-)
6. freq table (Shift+F)
7. sort [ or ]
8. select rows by example (,)
9. bulk select/toggle/unselect rows (gs/gt/gu)
10. filter selected rows only: (" / dup-sheet)

[frosencrantz]

Here’s my top ten/twenty list. It is partly between Saul and AJ. Thanks @saulpw and AJ.

@ajkerrigan I’d be interested to hear what custom variations you have of expand-col/contract-col. Is this your JMESpath plugin?
https://github.com/ajkerrigan/visidata-plugins#vd_jmespath-evaluate-jmespath-expressions

This was the common top 7ish

• freq table: Shift+F
• hide column: -
• sort: [ or ]
• select rows by example: ,
• bulk select/toggle/unselect rows: gs/gt/gu
• filter selected rows only: " (dup-sheet)
• create a new column by Python expr: =

Here's what I would add/agree with.

• Like AJ I also work with nested data, my top 3 cmds are unfurl-col/pyobj-cell/expand-col
• Help-sheets are very useful for me to find the longer tail commands I want to use Help Sheets zCtrl-H & gzCtrl+H. I find I'm using the menu system frequently.
• Understanding how to use the FreqSheet is very powerful (including the ge command, selection commands, and dive-row(s))
• And basic commands like q quit, Ctrl-S save are critical.

Wondering if others have a top ten list of most powerful commands you use.

[ajkerrigan]

I definitely use the JMESpath stuff regularly, yeah. Not because I'm particularly in love with the language, it just pops up a lot in stuff I work on. As for other nested shenanigans...

• VisiData has a native )/contract-col command, I added a g)/contract-cols command to quickly contract all columns in the sheet.
• I have custom z( and gz( bindings to recursively expand one or all columns.
• When I was using vfake a lot, I added an accordion-autofake command that would expand all columns, run autofake, then contract them again. Not something I use often today, but it was very useful at the time :)!
• Convenience commands to toggle between dicts and arrays of key/value pairs.
• zo to open a cell with a specific loader. Mostly useful when a cell contains stringified json and I want to dig a bit, and don't necessarily need to do it for all rows in the column.

Good call not forgetting the basic commands! I don't usually edit cells directly, but that does seem like a key thing to know is possible 👍 . Your mention of basics got me thinking that S and C to pop open the Sheets and Columns sheets are pretty important too. And resizing/wrapping is super important if you're dealing with long values. Who would have thought... coming up with a top 10 is really hard 😅

[frosencrantz]

@ajkerrigan thanks for that great response! I liked hearing about the custom commands you've created:

• I haven't had to use fake data, but that trick about expanding and faking the data seems like it could be very useful.
• zo is that what was suggested in [wishlist] Ability to load from a the contents of a cell. #465?
• I’ve used your convenience functions for key/value pairs, and it was useful. I was happy you shared that code, but I haven’t had to use it recently.

Agreed on the basic commands. S is burned into finger memory. C is also close behind. Resize commands such as _ and z- are very common in my usage. Yes coming up with a top 10 is hard. 😃

I think one thing I thought might be on @saulpw original list was W/M pivot/melt commands.

Curious if @anjakefala or anyone else has a top ten that they would like to share.

[anjakefala]

@frosencrantz

Curious if @anjakefala or anyone else has a top ten that they would like to share.

I have a serious answer to this question, that I will type up one day but right now my brain's answer is:

"My top command is Zzzzzzzz (longname sleep-hours-n)"