Terminal ToDo.txt.............................
Bash ninjas like Shashank Sharma can manage just about everything from the command line, and preparing a to-do list is no exception.
Bash ninjas like Shashank Sharma can do everything from the command line, and preparing a to-do list is no exception.
At its most basic, a task manager is designed to help you maintain a list of all errands or work that you have to accomplish. For many users, this translates into an ever-expanding text file that’s ultimately abandoned and replaced with a new file. However, if you prefer the simplicity of the text file-based task manager, but want additional features such as the ability to assign priorities to tasks, or identify and archive completed tasks, then Todo.txt is meant for you. You can even use the tool to create projects and assign multiple tasks to such projects.
One of the best things about Todo.txt is that it requires no installation, and supports multiple platforms and devices. Although it’s a command-line utility, its simplicity and features has spurred the growth of several community-developed applications for Android and Mac devices. If you prefer to work with a GUI, then you’ll find several graphical tools for Windows, and even Linux distributions such as Ubuntu that utilise Todo.txt to sort your tasks list.
To do: Get started
Unlike previous releases that required installation, recent versions of Todo.txt ship as a compressed tarball that you can download from the project’s GitHub page. The tarball comprises three files: todo.sh, todo.cfg and todo_ completion. You must run the chmod +x todo.sh command to make the script executable.
You can now run the script to add tasks with the ./todo.sh <options> <action> task description command. The tool refers to all possible operations as actions and every command must have one action. Some of the commonly used actions are as follows: add add the task to the todo.txt file del delete the specified task from todo.txt file do identify the specified task as done ls list all tasks in the todo.txt file.
You can run the ./todo.sh add “This is the first task.” command to add a new task to the list. When you run it for the first time, the tool creates three additional files in its directory: todo.txt, done.txt and report.txt. All tasks are added to the todo.txt file and assigned a number. So your first task is item one, second task is item two and so on. For each task you add, the tool will inform you of the item assigned to it: linux la la@ playground-budgie :~$ ./todo.sh add“Finish the Todo.txt article before the deadline.” 11 Finish the Todo.txt article before the deadline. TODO: 11 added. linux la la@ playground-budgie :~$ to do list
As you can see, the recently added task has been assigned item number 11. For a list of all the tasks in your todo list, run the ./todo.sh ls command.
If you find typing ./todo.sh every time you want to run the tool tedious, you can create an alias for it with the alias todo= ‘/path/to/./todo.sh’ . You can now run the todo add “This is another task.” command to add additional tasks to your todo.txt file. You can also run todo ls in a similar manner.
By default, the todo.sh script doesn’t affix a creation date for each new task it adds to the todo.txt file. You must use the -t flag if you want the creation dates to accompany each task in your to-do list. The command todo -t add “This task will be timestamped” adds a YYYY-MM-DD entry to the task.
To do: Pruning
You must refer to the tasks by their item numbers when using the do or the del actions. The command todo del 5 for instance, will delete task at item number five from the list. Similarly, the command, todo do 6 will remove item number six from the list, and automatically add it to the done.txt file. Unfortunately, when you finish a task and run the do command, Todo.txt will archive the specified task and automatically renumber all the remaining entries in the todo.txt file. If you don’t want Todo.txt to archive the completed tasks, you must use the -a flag: $ todo -a do 2 2 x 2018-01-29 This task will be identified as done, but not archived. TODO: 2 marked as done. $ todo ls 03 (B) This is a B class priority 04 (B) This is second B class priority 01 2018-01-29 Properly timestamped task 02 x 2018-01-29 This task will be identified as done, but not archived.