Kaibo's Aliases

Here are some aliases that I use in my daily work. They are defined in my .bashrc file. This is a work in progress. I will update this file as I add more aliases.

For checking home directory usage

My home directory is limited to 5 GB. Therefore, once in a while I need to check how much space I have left. .??* matches all hidden files/directories with at least two characters (such that . and .. are excluded). * matches all non-hidden files/directories. I sort the output by size in human-readable format and in reverse order.

duh(){
    cd
    du -skh .??* * | sort --human-numeric-sort --reverse
}

For monitoring CPU and GPU usage

Since my work tends to be memory-intensive, I use top -o RES to monitor memory usage. Default refresh interval is 3 seconds. Here, I set it to 1 second because 3 seconds is too slow for me. Note that top also allows you to monitor load average and CPU usage, which I find also useful.

alias t='top -o RES -d 1'

For monitoring GPU usage, I use nvidia-smi. I update it every second.

alias n='watch -n 1 nvidia-smi'

For working with MATLAB

I work with MATLAB and Python a lot. One common issue is the GLIBCXX_3.4.21 error (iykyk). A workaround is to use LD_PRELOAD to load the correct version of libstdc++.so.6, preferably the one in your conda environment, say py311. So, I do that in the alias first. Then, I need to activate my conda environment py311. Finally, I cd to my working directory and start MATLAB.

m(){
    export LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/miniforge3/envs/py311/lib/libstdc++.so.6
    mamba activate py311
    cd /path/to/my/working/directory
    matlab
}

For working with VNC server

Aside from accessing the Linux workstation through SSH using VSCode, I also use VNC server sometimes, especially when I need to use fsleyes. I set the resolution to 2560x1440 because it is the resolution of my laptop screen.

alias vnc='vncserver -geometry 2560x1440'

For running Python scripts

I often need to run Python script overnight. I use nohup to prevent the script from being killed when I log out and I use & to run the script in the background. In the following alias, the first positional argument $1 is the Python script that I want to run and the second positional argument $2 is the output file that I want to save the output to. The echo $! command prints the PID of the Python script. Then, I call top and use xargs to pass the PID to grep such that I can easily monitor the CPU and memory usage of the Python script.

py(){
    nohup python -u $1 > $2 & echo $! | xargs -I {} bash -c 'top -d 1 -b | grep {}'
}

For working with $\LaTeX$

At school and at work, I use $\LaTeX$ a lot. Here are some shorthands that I put in the preamble of my documents.

\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper, oneside, openany]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath, amsthm, amssymb, amsfonts}

% Theorem environments
\theoremstyle{plain}
\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}[theorem]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{corollary}[theorem]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{definition}[theorem]{Definition}
\newtheorem{example}[theorem]{Example}
\newtheorem{proposition}[theorem]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{remark}[theorem]{Remark}

% For calculus
\DeclareMathOperator{\grad}{grad}
\DeclareMathOperator{\curl}{curl}
\DeclareMathOperator{\Div}{div}

% For real, complex, and functional analysis
\DeclareMathOperator{\dist}{dist}
\DeclareMathOperator{\supp}{supp}
\DeclareMathOperator{\re}{Re}
\DeclareMathOperator{\im}{Im}

% For linear algebra
\DeclareMathOperator{\rank}{rank}
\DeclareMathOperator{\tr}{tr}
\DeclareMathOperator{\diag}{diag}

% Misc
\DeclareMathOperator{\sgn}{sgn}
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmin}{arg\,min}
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{arg\,max}