A Simple Shell-Based Local TODO List

Simple Fish Shell-based TODO System

I wanted a small TODO list that only had to be accessible on a single machine. I could just use a text file but I don't want to open an editor or think too much when interacting with the list. A moments thought led me to writing some simple fish shell functions and adding them to


        .config/fish/config.fish


        function todo
          echo $argv >> ~/.todo
        end

this function appends a message to the TODO log, used like so:

todo write blog post explaining system

Now we need an easy way to read the list:


        function ls-todo
          cat -n ~/.todo
        end

the -n option displays line numbers. These will be useful for specifying entries to remove once we've smashed our goals. The following function deletes a line, given a line number:


        function rm-todo
          awk "$(printf 'FNR != %s {print $0;}' $argv[1])" ~/.todo > ~/.todo_next
          mv ~/.todo_next ~/.todo
        end

a final convenience command simply opens an editor on the list:


        function ed-todo
          hx ~/.todo
        end

Now to shame the user into accomplishing the tasks by displaying it back to them whenever an interactive fish shell session starts:


        if status is-interactive
          ls-todo
        end