Up (Ultimate Plumber) - Tool For Writing Linux Pipes With Instant Live Preview

$ lshw |& ./up

• use PgUp/PgDn and Ctrl-[←]/Ctrl-[→] for basic browsing through the command output;
• in the input box at the top of the screen, start writing any bash pipeline; then press Enter to execute the command you typed, and the Ultimate Plumber will immediately show you the output of the pipeline in the scrollable window below (replacing any earlier contents)
  • For example, you can try writing: grep network -A2 | grep : | cut -d: -f2- | paste - -— on my computer, after pressing Enter, the screen then shows the pipeline and a scrollable preview of its output like below:
    

       | grep network -A2 | grep : | cut -d: -f2- | paste - -
    Wireless interface      Centrino Advanced-N 6235
    Ethernet interface      RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller

  • WARNING: Please be careful when using it! It could be dangerous. In particular, writing "rm" or "dd" into it could be like running around with a chainsaw. But you'd be careful writing "rm" anywhere in Linux anyway, no?
    
• when you are satisfied with the result, you can press Ctrl-X to exit the Ultimate Plumber, and the command you built will be written into up1.sh file in the current working directory (or, if it already existed, up2.sh, etc., until 1000, based on Shlemiel the Painter's algorithm). Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-C to quit without saving.
• If the command you piped into up is long-running (in such case you will see a tilde ~ indicator character in the top-left corner of the screen, meaning that up is still waiting for more input), you may need to press Ctrl-S to temporarily freeze up's input buffer (a freeze will be indicated by a # character in top-left corner), which will inject a fake EOF into the pipeline; otherwise, some commands in the pipeline may not print anything, waiting for full input (especially commands like wc or sort, but grep, perl, etc. may also show incomplete results). To unfreeze back, press Ctrl-Q.

• The pipeline is passed verbatim to a bash -c command, so any bash-isms should work.
• The input buffer of the Ultimate Plumber is currently fixed at 40 MB. If you reach this limit, a + character should get displayed in the top-left corner of the screen. (This is intended to be changed to a dynamically/manually growable buffer in a future version of up.)
• MacOSX support: I don't have a Mac, thus I have no idea if it works on one. You are welcome to try, and also to send PRs. If you're interested in me providing some kind of official-like support for MacOSX, please consider trying to find a way to send me some usable-enough Mac computer. Please note I'm not trying to "take advantage" of you by this, as I'm actually not at all interested in achieving a Mac otherwise. (Also, trying to commit to this kind of support will be an extra burden and obligation on me. Knowing someone out there cares enough to do a fancy physical gesture would really help alleviate this.) If you're serious enough to consider this option, please contact me by email (mailto:czapkofan@gmail.com) or keybase (https://keybase.io/akavel), so that we could try to research possible ways to achieve this. Thanks for understanding!
• Prior art: I was surprised no one seemed to write a similar tool before, that I could find. It should have been possible to write this since the dawn of Unix already, or earlier! And indeed, after I announced up, I got enough publicity that my attention was directed to one such earlier project already: Pipecut. Looks interesting! You may like to check it too! (Thanks @TronDD.)
• Other influences: I don't remember the fact too well already, but I'm rather sure that this must have been inspired in big part by The Bret Victor's Talk(s).