Using Emacs as my Shell

Inspired by u/awannaphasch2016's post about [living in emacs](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/tbw7hs/for_those_who_live_inside_emacs_when_do_you_come/), I found myself writing [this blog post](https://www.kindness.city/blog/2022-03-12-using-emacs-as-my-shell.html) about using vanilla emacs to do the sort of work that you might otherwise do with a terminal window. tl;dr: I'm usually at least as happy with `M-&` and `dired` as I am with `bash` in a terminal. Keyboard macros replace bash one-liners.

> I was surprised to find that no-one talked about using emacs itself > instead of a terminal. I've found that for most tasks, I don't need > a terminal window. I use dired for file navigation and manipulation, > and if I want to run some program (for example sudo apt update && > sudo apt upgrade) I usually use M-& (which is bound to > async-shell-command). +1. I wonder the same thing. Opting for vterm when you have Emacs at its entirety just sounds absurd to me. Moreover, by dropping vterm, you are also embracing a much more interactive model (as you wrote). Emacs ≫ traditional terminal simply due to its interactive model. In a sense, Emacs here functions like Acme+win from Plan 9. [ C-M-% is super handy when you use the \\, construct. ]

>Emacs ≫ traditional terminal simply due to its interactive model. In a sense, Emacs here functions like Acme+win from Plan 9. Exactly! >\[ C-M-% is super handy when you use the \\, construct. \] `query-replace-regexp` (on `C-M-%`) is awesome. I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by `the \, construct` though.

\\, in the replace part lets you run arbitrary lisp code ;-) In interactive calls, the replacement text can contain ‘\,’ followed by a Lisp expression. Each replacement evaluates that expression to compute the replacement string. Inside of that expression, ‘\&’ is a string denoting the whole match as a string, ‘\N’ for a partial match, ‘\#&’ and ‘\#N’ for the whole or a partial match converted to a number with ‘string-to-number’, and ‘\#’ itself for the number of replacements done so far (starting with zero).

Ah yes! It is a wonderfully powerful feature. I'm afraid I've only used that once or twice though -- I think usually with something simple like `upcase`, `downcase`, or `capitalize`. Usually if I'm doing something that complex, I'll use `C-M-s` (`isearch-forward-regexp`) inside a keyboard macro, in which I can call whatever functions or lisp I want. That way I get to interactively build what I'm doing, rather than typing a complex regexp+lisp expression all in one go.

In many cases dired does things even better than a normal file browser - one of the huge things I love is the ability to bulk rename, which is kinda rare on gui file browsers (I believe thunar has it, but stuff like nautilus needs add-ons). Not to mention stuff like searching multiple files (no need to use grep and remember how to format stuff) or find-replacing across multiple files (yeah sed exists but can't be bothered to learn arcane syntax), etc.

Totally! For anyone looking to edit directory listings as if they were text files, check out wdired mode: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Wdired.html

Beyond what can be done with specific modes I find great value in always running my shells inside an emacs buffer (`M-x shell`). You get full text search, the ability to easily copy any output into another buffer, run macros to automate things, scrape data from command output etc. I generally have a named buffer running a shell in each of my active environments.

Also let's not forget eshell - you can freaking mix elisp and shell commands in the same command! Nowadays i use it for some tasks almost exclusively, e.g. with a lot of short commands that are not worth wrapping in a function.

I have maybe two dozen bash functions that I rely on, and eshell looks like bash, but I lose those functions. Maybe I'd consider the switch if it were trivial to re-write bash functions for eshell.

I didn't even know about this feature. This is excellent information.

I love the feature to automatically copy or move files between two dired buffers.

You may be interested in [Sheldon](https://github.com/Overdr0ne/shelldon#introduction) (by u/SamTheComputerSlayer). It's a wonderful little package that enhances `async-shell-command`.

I have a hybrid. I run my shells mostly within emacs. I use async shell commands for some things. I have emacs functions. I have a long list of shell scripts. I use magit for some things, vc for some things, and git shell commands for some things. It's a little crazy or a lot. But it works so very well so much of the time.

Neat! Thanks :)

Depending on where your bash functions are defined, they might be available to `M-&`. This is actually related to one of the reasons I tend to use `M-&` rather than `eshell`. I like to be able to use bash for loops and things.

Also works transparently with TRAMP!

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I tried vterm for a while, and while technically impressive, running a shell in this way gives all the nice features you mentioned, with less complexity. Yes, I can't run htop inside Emacs, but I do have proced, so... I am fine.

How does this work? I usually have to manually do it

`(setq dired-dwim-target t)`