cmdtodo

A command line ToDo list application for Unix based systems.

This project started when I had a bunch of todolists scattered in text files throughout my computer. It was tedious to look through all of them, so I then decided to write a Bash script that goes through all of them and prints their cotents to one main file. I kept adding features to the script to make the process more useful and user friendly and it evantually became a full command line tool.

I also used this project as a way to learn Bash scripting and how to work with the Unix shell, as I had started as a Linux newbie only two months before.

Installation

All you need to do is set an environment variable, $CMDTODO_ROOT to the root directory of this project and add it to $PATH

I did it in $HOME/.profile but I know there are other places where you can configure this. As long as the environment variable is set and it's added to $PATH then you can type the cmdtodo command anywhere and it'll run the application.

From my $HOME/.profile:

 # setup for cmdtodo
 export CMDTODO_ROOT="$HOME/cmdtodo"
 export PATH=$PATH:$CMDTODO_ROOT

I have all of my source files in my $HOME/cmdtodo directory, but you can have it wherever you want in your system as long as $CMDTODO_ROOT points to it. Then the rest should work fine.

How to Use

Run the cmdtodo command with no arguments to get a usage description if you need a reminder:

usage: cmdtodo <action> <list items>

  action options:
    -new -- make a new list
    -del -- delete a list
    
    -e  -- edit lists
    -v  -- view lists
    -f [tag] -- view list filtered by <...> tags.
    -dd -- filter lines with a ## due date #. all lists are shown here 
	
    -ls -- display all of your current existing lists

    -h -- display this help message

  <list items> Is optional. If empty, and the command requires
  arguments, it prompts a menu of lists to perform action on.
  If not empty, use a space separated list of names or numbers
  that you would've entered on the menu prompt.

The Menu Prompt

In use cases where you interact with one or more lists, and you do not provide them as command line arguments, you will get a menu prompt:

| Options:
|  1) CliChange
|  2) cs240
|  3) cs350
|  4) cs375
|  5) cs476
|  6) cs499
|  7) GeneralJobs
|  8) jrapl
|  9) Misc
|  10) PersonalProjects
|  @  all
| Enter the ones you want by name or number: 
| >> 

You can make selections with a space-separated list of list names, numbers that correspond to the list names, or a range of numbers, ie 2-7. You can even use any combination of these formats, such as cs240 cs375 10 5-7 which will translate to interacting with lists cs240 cs375 PersonalProjects cs476 cs499 GeneralJobs. You can use names, numbers, ranges, or any combination of the formats as a command line argument as well, and then the menu prompt will be skipped. The @ option selects all lists, and can also be used as a command line argument.

The Menu Prompt applies to editing, viewing, filtering, and deleting operations decribed below.

Unix wildcard symbols are not supported, so you can't use cs* as a placeholder for cs240 cs350 cs375 cs476 cs499. You'll get whatever error the Bash interpreter gets from trying to process that and not having it work with how my script is set up.

Creating a New List

cmdtodo -new: You can follow this command with the name of the new list. If you do not provide the name, you will be asked for one. If there already exists a list with that name, you will be asked to provide another name.

Viewing your lists

cmdtodo -ls: Displays the lists you currently have.

Deleting Lists

cmdtodo -del: If you do not provide command line arguments, the Menu Prompt above will be invoked.

Before deleting each list, you are given the option to print its contents to the console (just to make sure you know what you're deleting) and then confirm whether or not you'd like to delete. All deletions are final!

Editing Lists

cmdtodo -e: If you do not provide command line arguments, the Menu Prompt above will be invoked.

Opens one or more lists for editing. By default, the text editor is nano but you can also use vim or gedit or really any text editor that can be invoked from the command line, as long as it can open multiple files passed as command line arguments. You can specify which one to use in the texteditor file in the root directory of this project

Viewing List Contents

cmdtodo -v: If you do not provide command line arguments, the Menu Prompt above will be invoked.

Prints the list contents to the console. Each list is separated by ==========listname===========. While you can also view list contents with the edit command, this one allows you to see them all at once on screen.

Filtering List Contents

cmdtodo -f tag: If you do not provide further command line arguments (after the tag), the Menu Prompt above will be invoked.

Different items in your list might belong to different 'categories', such as priorities, upcoming exams, tasks that will take like 5 minutes, big projects that are due in a while but you should start working on them soon, etc. The I handled this by writing a <tag> on each line of a certain category. So for my priority items, each line had <pr> somewhere on it. Then to filter out only those lines, I invoked cmdtodo -f pr. You assign whatever meaning you want to the <tag>s, the cmdtodo -f option just allows you to filter out only those entries.

The results are printed to the console in the same format as Viewing List Contents.

Printing Due Dates

cmdtodo -dd: This one does not take any other command line arguments. I haven't made it so you specify which lists, so the program just does it for all of them. If anyone would like me to make it so you can actually change that, post an Issue and then I'll be happy to change it. I just haven't really needed the speficications in my personal uses of the tool.

Due dates are denoted in my text files by ## ... #. What's in the ## ... # doesn't matter, it can be ## monday # or ## tomorrow # or ## sat 12/14 23:59 #. This command prints out all of the lists in the same manner as Viewing List Contents but only the lines with ## ... # somewhere in them.

Dependencies

Unix system that can run Bash scripts.

You might notice that Github says that this project includes ~11% Python, but those are currently deprecated files in my archive folder. I keep my old files that I put brain work into around for if they are useful later, but that's not part of the project at all. So you don't have to worry about this not working on the off chance that you don't have Python installed.