Using the cheat command on Fedora Linux

The term “cheat sheet” has long been used to refer to listings of commands with quick explanations and examples that help people get used to running them on the Linux command line and understanding their many options.

Most Linux users have, at one time or another, relied on cheat sheets to get them started. There is, however, a tool called “cheat” that comes with a couple hundred cheat sheets and that installs quickly and easily on Fedora and likely many other Linux systems. Read on to see how the cheat command works.

First, to install cheat on Fedora, use a command like one of these:

$ sudo yum install cheat

The cheat-sheet files on Fedora will be stored in /usr/share/cheat and are all simple ASCII (text) files like this one:

$ file /usr/share/cheat/xargs
/usr/share/cheat/xargs: ASCII text

To use the cheat command, try commands like these:

$ cheat uname
$ cheat xargs
$ cheat cheat

For the uname command, the response will look like this, displaying command options and sample output:

$ cheat uname
# To print all system information:
uname -a
# Linux system-hostname 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.32-1 x86_64 GNU/Linux

# To print the hostname:
uname -n
# system-hostname

# To print the kernel release:
uname -r
# 3.2.0-4-amd64

# To print the kernel version, with more specific information:
uname -v
# #1 SMP Debian 3.2.32-1

# To print the hardware instruction set:
uname -m
# x86_64

# To print the kernel name:
uname -s
# Linux

# To print the operating system:
uname -o
# GNU/Linux

The command cheat sheets that are installed with the cheat tool include all of these:

$ cd /usr/share/cheat
$ ls
7z          csplit         head        mutt         pip        snmpwalk     tree
ab          cups           hello       mv           pkcon      socat        truncate
acl         curl           hg          mysql        pkgtools   sockstat     udisksctl
alias       cut            history     mysqldump    pkill      sort         ulimit
ansi        date           http        nc           popd       split        uname
apk         dd             hub         ncat         ps         sport        uniq
apparmor    deb            iconv       ncdu         psql       sqlite3      unzip
apt         df             ifconfig    netstat      pushd      sqlmap       urpm
apt-cache   dhclient       indent      nkf          pwd        ss           vagrant
apt-get     diff           ip          nmap         python     ssh          vim
aptitude    distcc         iptables    nmcli        r2         ssh-add      virtualenv
aria2c      dnf            irssi       notify-send  rcs        ssh-copy-id  wc
asciiart    docker         iwconfig    nova         readline   ssh-keygen   weechat
asterisk    dpkg           journalctl  npm          rename     stdout       wget
at          du             jq          ntp          rm         strace       xargs
awk         emacs          jrnl        numfmt       route      su           xmlto
bash        export         kill        od           rpm        sudo         xrandr
bower       ffmpeg         less        openssl      rpm2cpio   svn          xxd
bzip2       find           lib         org-mode     rss2email  systemctl    yaourt
cat         fkill          ln          p4           rsync      systemd      youtube-dl
cd          for            ls          pacman       sam2p      tail         yum
cheat       gcc            lsblk       pass         scd        tar          z
chmod       gdb            lsof        paste        scp        tarsnap      zfs
chown       git            lvm         patch        screen     tcpdump      zip
comm        gpg            man         pdftk        sed        tee          zoneadm
convert     grep           markdown    perl         shred      tidy         zsh
cp          gs             mdadm       pgrep        shutdown   tmux
cpdf        gyb            mkdir       php          slurm      top
crontab     gzip           more        ping         smbclient  tr
cryptsetup  hardware-info  mount       ping6        snap       trashy

You can display a cheat sheet for any of these commands. Some will show a long series of examples and others, just a few. This, of course, depends on the command’s complexity and options.

$ cheat ulimit
# Report all current limits
ulimit -a

# Unlimited file descriptors
ulimit -n unlimited

There is no man page available for the cheat command, but you can cheat on the cheat command itself to see its options:

$ cheat cheat
# To see example usage of a program:
cheat 

# To edit a cheatsheet
cheat -e 

# To list available cheatsheets
cheat -l

# To search available cheatsheets
cheat -s 

# To get the current `cheat' version
cheat -v

Using the cheat -l command, for example, we can see the commands, files and tags which tell where the cheat sheets came from:

$ cheat -l | head -11
title:        file:                          tags:
7z            /usr/share/cheat/7z            community,compression
ab            /usr/share/cheat/ab            community
acl           /usr/share/cheat/acl           community
alias         /usr/share/cheat/alias         community
ansi          /usr/share/cheat/ansi          community
apk           /usr/share/cheat/apk           community,packaging
apparmor      /usr/share/cheat/apparmor      community
apt           /usr/share/cheat/apt           community,packaging
apt-cache     /usr/share/cheat/apt-cache     community,packaging
apt-get       /usr/share/cheat/apt-get       community,packaging

If you want to add your own cheat sheets, you first need to select your editor and create a directory to store them.

$ export CHEAT_EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim
$ mkdir .cheat

Then use the cheat -e command to create your cheat sheet:

$ cheat -e hello

Here’s the hello file which contains a sample cheat sheet for this new command:

$ cat hello
Hello, World!
=============
For some reason, the world never says hello back, but saying "Hello, World!"
is something of a Unix/Linux tradition.

Now copy the file to the /usr/share/cheat directory:

$ sudo cp .cheat/hello /usr/share/cheat

Then try out your new cheat sheet:

$ cheat hello
Hello, World!
=============
For some reason, the world never says hello back, but saying "Hello, World!"
is something of a Unix/Linux tradition.

You can add cheat sheets for other commands or for scripts that you intend others to use to explain their options. Unlike man pages, cheat sheets just provide command examples, but often these are the most useful thing, especially for new users who don’t want to struggle with all of a command’s syntactical options explained in the associated man pages.