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Life inside one big text file
Merlin Mann | Aug 17 2005
O’Reilly Network Weblogs: Living in text files Giles takes one of the biggest, geekiest leaps you can—moving all of his stuff into a single big-ass plain text file.
This ambitious strategy—usually only whispered about among the lower geek echelons in which I dwell—seems to require a lot of confidence, planning, and familiarity with your favorite flavor of text editor. Mine’s currently TextMate, but, given what I’ve seen people like Danny do with Vim (and its incremental search-on-steroids, scripting functions, and endless shortcuts and configurability), this really reignites my resolve to hit the book and thumb through all my bookmarks again. So. Questions for people who are already living in one text file:
Spill whatever you like about your one-file system (and, curious folks, feel free to ask questions). Related Stuff 74 Comments
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 I still have three different...Submitted by R (not verified) on August 17, 2005 - 5:41am.
I still have three different ways to store a running list: * big ass text file * wiki page * cheap pocket notebook All are useful. The text file was fine when I carried my Zaurus or Palm around, but data-entry was slow & I switched to the notebook. I use it when I need to add something & am not at a computer. I normally run SSH & can therefore often access the text file remotely. I don't like the idea of keeping it on a USB keydrive, but some people do. The wiki is there for things I might need some accountability for & commitments I make for others. Now, more on the big text file... I still sometimes use a pseudo-wiki markup, which gives it some kind of structure (with headings and such). I have a large space after the bottom organized line so I can easily drop unsorted stuff. Sometimes I just "echo 'thing to remember' >> big.txt. I also have a bash alias so I only have to type "b thing to remember'. This means I don't have to open up vim. vim's 'dd' makes it easy to cut a line & insert it elsewhere to cleanup the file a little bit. Another handy organization technique in vim is to use code-folding on your sections/subsections. If I need to find something, I will normally just use grep on the textfile. But vim's search capabilities are also nice. I don't keep multiple revisions of this running textfile. Other things which need multiple revisions are in their own text files & this is why I use grep: I search through all text files in a directory & can use it recursively if I need to. subversion or other real version control software is really ideal for versioning the text. » POSTED IN:
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