cheap allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line without conflicts with the original cheat by defunkt. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.

cheap depends only on python and pip.

The next time you're forced to disarm a nuclear weapon without consulting Google, you may run:

cheap tar

You will be presented with a cheatsheet resembling:

# To extract an uncompressed archive:
tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar

# To extract a .gz archive:
tar -xzvf /path/to/foo.tgz

# To create a .gz archive:
tar -czvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

# To extract a .bz2 archive:
tar -xjvf /path/to/foo.tgz

# To create a .bz2 archive:
tar -cjvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

To see what cheatsheets are availble, run cheap -l.

Note that, while cheap was designed primarily for *nix system administrators, it is agnostic as to what content it stores. If you would like to use cheap to store notes on your favorite cookie recipes, feel free.

First install the required python dependencies with:

sudo pip install docopt pygments

Then, clone this repository, cd into it, and run:

sudo python setup.py install

The value of cheap is that it allows you to create your own cheatsheets - the defaults are meant to serve only as a starting point, and can and should be modified.

Cheatsheets are stored in the ~/.cheap/ directory, and are named on a per-keyphrase basis. In other words, the content for the tar cheatsheet lives in the ~/.cheap/tar file.

Provided that you have an EDITOR environment variable set, you may edit cheatsheets with:

cheap -e foo

If the 'foo' cheatsheet already exists, it will be opened for editing. Otherwise, it will be created automatically.

After you've customized your cheatsheets, I urge you to track ~/.cheap/ along with your dotfiles.

Personal cheatsheets are saved in the ~/.cheap directory by default, but you can specify a different default by exporting a DEFAULT_CHEAP_DIR environment variable:

export DEFAULT_CHEAP_DIR=/path/to/my/cheats

You can additionally instruct cheap to look for cheatsheets in other directories by exporting a CHEAPPATH environment variable:

export CHEAPPATH=/path/to/my/cheats

You may, of course, append multiple directories to your CHEAPPATH:

export CHEAPPATH=CHEAPPATH:/path/to/more/cheats

You may view which directories are on your CHEAPPATH with cheap -d.

cheap can apply syntax highlighting to your cheatsheets if so desired. To enable this feature, set a CHEAPCOLORS environment variable:

export CHEAPCOLORS=true

The cheap/autocompletion directory contains scripts to enable command-line autocompletion for various shells. To activate autocompletion, simply copy the appropriate script to the appropriate path on your system. (The "appropriate path" will vary on a per-platform basis, so this documentation shall not speculate as to where that may be.)

• lucaswerkmeister/cheats: An implementation of this concept in pure bash that also allows not only for numerical indexing of subcomands but also supports running commands interactively.

• jahendrie/cheat: A bash-only implementation that additionally allows for cheatsheets to be created and grep searched from the command-line. (jahendrie contributed key ideas to this project as well.)

• cheat RubyGem: A clever gem from 2006 that clearly had similar motivations. It is unclear whether or not it is currently maintained.

• tldr: "Simplified and community-driven man pages".