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by mprovost 451 days ago
The OG drill book (Unix Power Tools) had a tip for quick note taking - redirect to /dev/null. For the past 25 years I pretty much always have a terminal window open with a shell redirecting to /dev/null so I can copy and paste or type quickly. I suppose if you wanted to save it you could redirect to a file instead of /dev/null but I always treat it as a buffer that will eventually go away.
1 comments

Are you just saying here that you open a shell, redirect cat's output to /dev/null, and then use the terminal buffer for notes? I can't quite parse out from your comment what you mean as a workflow; I checked out my copy of Unix Power Tools and didn't see anything clarifying what you mean in either Chapter 43 "Redirecting Input and Output" or flicking through section IV "Basic Editing".

If you have a few minutes and could clarify, I'd appreciate it. I love a good *nix workflow.

I found it! Section 48.3 "A Scratchpad on Your Screen" from the first edition.

https://web.deu.edu.tr/doc/oreily/unix/upt/ch48_03.htm

Yes that's it: "cat > /dev/null". Or you can even skip running cat and just "> /dev/null". You exit by typing ctrl-d which sends an EOF (and then sends all the output to /dev/null!).
So I just tried and we can use this with zellij sessions as well , which is pretty nice and has a really really nice ui/ux
cat > ~/anyrandomfile also works if you want a persistant connection / want storage to save things

I am not sure if the noteux.com works in the same way.

I am also not sure but is there a way to create persistant terminal connections as each is going to /dev/null but its persistant and you can connect to any of it?

maybe using zellij / tmux