unscript v1.2.0

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Run npm scripts using automatically shortened script names

unscript [options] [query]

What is unscript?

Unscript lets you query and run npm scripts from a list of shorthands. These shorthands are generated from the names of the scripts in your package.json. Unscript creates shorthands by combining the first letter of each word separated by a delimiter (: by default).

For example:

• dev would be shortened to d.
• build:dev would be shortened to bd.
• lint:watch:dev would be shortened to lwd.

If there are at least 2 identical shorthands then a prompt will appear to ask which of the results should be run.

For example:

• build:dev would be shortened to bd.
• build:deploy would also be shortened to bd.

If no query is passed then a list of all scripts in the package.json will be displayed.

Why was this made?

There are many existing tools on npm that can run javascript files easily as a drop-in replacement for package.json scripts. Although these are helpful utilities I found that I wanted to create many small package.json scripts that I wouldn't need a full javascript file for. Unscript was created out of my own personal desire to quick run npm scripts using automatically generated shortened names.

Options

Installation

Unscript can be used by installing it globally

npm i -g unscript

or by using using npx:

npx unscript lw

to save time writing that out it is recommended to alias the command to a shorter name:

# .bashrc .zshrc ...etc
alias un='npx unscript'

Usage

Basic usage

In this case the dev script is run because dev is the only script that was automatically shortened to d.

unscript d

Handling multiple scripts with the same generated shorthands

When multiple scripts have the same generated shorthand then a prompt will appear to ask which of the results should be run.

Run the selected script without prompting

Using the -a (auto) option will run the selected script without prompting for confirmation if there is only one script matching the shorthand query.