marks - mark and operate on files

This is a rough proof of concept. It probably won't eat your files, but I make no promises whatsoever.

synopsis

$ marks --help
/usr/local/bin/marks - mark and operate on files

Usage: marks [command] [args]
    marks               - List current marks (shortcut for mark ls)
    marks add [path]    - Add a file path to the mark list
    marks + [path]      - Shorthand for add
    marks remove [path] - Remove a file path from the mark list
    marks - [path]      - Shorthand for remove
    marks clear         - Clear mark list
    marks cp            - Copy marked files to current directory
    marks each [cmd]    - Execute command for each marked file
    marks ls            - List current marks
    marks mv            - Move files to current directory and unmark
    marks -h            - Print this help message

example

# Some files to work with:
brennen@inertia:~/Downloads $ ls
binti.epub  rogue_protocol.epub  unix_reader.pdf

# Mark a couple of them:
brennen@inertia:~/Downloads $ mark + *.epub
brennen@inertia:~/Downloads $ marks
/home/brennen/Downloads/rogue_protocol.epub
/home/brennen/Downloads/binti.epub

# Jump to a target directory:
brennen@inertia:~/Downloads $ cd ~/books/sf

# Move the files here:
brennen@inertia:~/books/sf $ marks mv
Moved: /home/brennen/Downloads/rogue_protocol.epub
Moved: /home/brennen/Downloads/binti.epub

# Note that the mark list is now empty:
brennen@inertia:~/books/sf $ marks
brennen@inertia:~/books/sf $

installing

I haven't uploaded a recent version of this to CPAN yet. For now, I expect this would work on a Debian, at any rate:

# Module::Build may be installed, but if not, either:
sudo apt install libmodule-build-perl

# Or:
sudo cpan -i Module::Build

# Then:
git clone https://code.p1k3.com/gitea/brennen/app-markfiles.git
cd app-markfiles
perl Build.PL
./Build installdeps
./Build test
sudo ./Build install

rationale, notes

This is a proof of concept and the interface might change. Right now it's in poorly-organized Perl and shell, and has some dependencies. It's pretty tiny and maybe I'll polish it up or port it to some language that squicks the cool kids out less, but also I might not if it suits my needs well enough. Right now it's in a state where it feels usable on my machine, so I think you could probably try it, but there are definitely bugs.

In the very simple case this is a worse interface than just typing mv somefiles ~/some/path. All the same, I find it pretty handy to stash the path of one or more files somewhere while I figure out what I'm going to do with them, and it permits building up a list while hopping around the filesystem working on other things.

There are definitely bugs in this implementation.

This is meant to enable unixy one-tool-one-job patterns (thanks to Joey Hess for the suggestion):

marks + *.foo
mv $(marks) dest

...but it also includes convenience cruft like marks cp, marks mv, and marks each. My thinking is that it's nice to be able to do operations that clear files from the list as they're manipulated, and have a few extra built-in guard rails.

I'm not totally sure how interactive this should be / how much handholding I want.

TODO

• sqlite - too heavyweight?
• sqlite - version the schema, if there's a good reason to keep it
• handle ~ expansion (and general shell globbing?) in files/stdin?
• more graceful installation instrux
• remove feels like it's going to get confused with an operation that deletes the file rather than removing the mark from the list. Should this be called unmark or something instead?
• it'd be cool to plumb this into fzf a little bit