From 257473991d26e0b4916ac878fb276d810e7f95d9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: John Bowdre <john@bowdre.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 14:37:50 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] new post: cat-file-without-comments

---
 .../posts/cat-file-without-comments/index.md  | 54 +++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 54 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 content/posts/cat-file-without-comments/index.md

diff --git a/content/posts/cat-file-without-comments/index.md b/content/posts/cat-file-without-comments/index.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0da19ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/posts/cat-file-without-comments/index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+title: "Cat a File Without Comments" # Title of the blog post.
+date: 2023-02-22 # Date of post creation.
+# lastmod: 2023-02-20T10:32:20-06:00 # Date when last modified
+description: "A quick trick to strip out the comments when viewing the contents of a file." # Description used for search engine.
+featured: false # Sets if post is a featured post, making appear on the home page side bar.
+draft: false # Sets whether to render this page. Draft of true will not be rendered.
+toc: true # Controls if a table of contents should be generated for first-level links automatically.
+usePageBundles: true
+# menu: main
+# featureImage: "file.png" # Sets featured image on blog post.
+# featureImageAlt: 'Description of image' # Alternative text for featured image.
+# featureImageCap: 'This is the featured image.' # Caption (optional).
+# thumbnail: "thumbnail.png" # Sets thumbnail image appearing inside card on homepage.
+# shareImage: "share.png" # Designate a separate image for social media sharing.
+codeLineNumbers: false # Override global value for showing of line numbers within code block.
+series: Tips # Projects, Scripts, vRA8, K8s on vSphere
+tags:
+  - linux
+  - shell
+  - regex
+comment: true # Disable comment if false.
+---
+It's super handy when a Linux config file is loaded with comments to tell you precisely how to configure the thing, but all those comments can really get in the way when you're trying to review the current configuration.
+
+Next time, instead of scrolling through page after page of lengthy embedded explanations, just use:
+```shell
+egrep -v "^\s*(#|$)" $filename
+```
+
+For added usefulness, I alias this command to `ccat` (which my brain interprets as "commentless cat") in [my `~/.zshrc`](https://github.com/jbowdre/dotfiles/blob/main/zsh/.zshrc):
+```shell
+alias ccat='egrep -v "^\s*(#|$)"'
+```
+
+Now instead of viewing all 75 lines of a [mostly-default Vagrantfile](/create-vms-chromebook-hashicorp-vagrant), I just see the 7 that matter:
+```shell
+; wc -l Vagrantfile
+75 Vagrantfile
+
+; ccat Vagrantfile
+Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
+  config.vm.box = "oopsme/windows11-22h2"
+  config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
+    libvirt.cpus = 4
+    libvirt.memory = 4
+  end
+end
+
+; ccat Vagrantfile | wc -l
+7
+```
+
+Nice!