Betty is an open source tool that translates English-like phrases into Linux commands. The main goal of this project is to use the Linux powered systems through natural language input. Let us see some examples how it works.
Installation
Betty installation is very simple and straight forward. Make sure you’ve installed the following prerequisites packages.
On Debian based systems:
sudo apt-get install git curl ruby
On RPM based systems:
yum install git curl ruby
Now, git clone the Betty repository to any preferred location. I am going to clone the betty repo in my home directory i.e /home/sk/.
git clone https://github.com/pickhardt/betty
Add the betty alias in your bashrc file.
sudo nano ~/.bashrc
Add the following line at the end:
alias betty="/home/sk/betty/main.rb"
Make sure you’ve replaced the correct path of the betty directory.
It’s done. Now, it’s time to play with betty.
Usage
You should include the word “betty” in-front of every English phrases. As you may know already, if we want to know the user name of our system, we run the following command:
whoami
Sample output:
sk
As you see above, my current user name is sk. Well, now we can get the same result using betty as shown below.
betty whats my username
Sample output:
Betty: Running whoami sk
Cool, isn’t it? Yes. Betty understands the normal English phrase “whats my username” that I entered, and ran the command “whoami” automatically, and finally displayed the correct output.
Let us see some other commands too.
Betty will respond in multiple ways if you didn’t enter exactly what you’re looking for. For example, we run the following command:
betty whats my name
Betty isn’t sure whether she should find the system username or full name. In this case, she will ask you multiple questions to find the exact result. As you see below, Betty asks me which command(whoami or finger $(whoami) | sed ‘s/.*: *//;q’) should I want to execute. I just want it to display my username, so i chose number 1.
Betty: Okay, I have multiple ways to respond. Betty: Enter the number of the command you want me to run, or N (no) if you don't want me to run any. [1] whoami Gets your system username. [2] finger $(whoami) | sed 's/.*: *//;q' Gets your full name. 1 Betty: Running whoami sk
Compress And Uncompress Folders
If you want to compress a file or a folder, use the following command. For example, I want to compress a folder called “test” folder in my home directory.
betty compress test/ test.tar.gz
Sample output:
Betty: Running tar -czvf test.tar.gz test/ test/ test/home/ test/home/sk/ test/home/sk/test/ test/home/sk/test/sample
Similarly, we can use the following command to uncompress an archive file.
betty uncompress test.tar.gz
Sample output:
Betty: Running mkdir test && tar -zxvf test.tar.gz -C test test/ test/home/ test/home/sk/ test/home/sk/test/ test/home/sk/test/sample
Complete list of Betty commands
Betty tool has some command formats. It doesn’t understand if you put the command “what is my user name” instead of “whats my username”. So, you have to enter the correct English phrase that supported by Betty.
The complete list of supported commands are given below.
<strong>Count:</strong>
betty how many words are in this directory
betty how many characters are in myfile.py
betty count lines in this folder
(Note that there's many ways to say more or less the same thing.)
<strong>Config:</strong>
betty change your name to Joe
betty speak to me
betty stop speaking to me
<strong>Datetime:</strong>
betty what time is it
betty what is todays date
betty what month is it
betty whats today
<strong>Find:</strong>
betty find me all files that contain california
<strong>Internet:</strong>
betty download http://www.mysite.com/something.tar.gz to something.tar.gz
betty uncompress something.tar.gz
betty unarchive something.tar.gz to somedir
(You can use unzip, unarchive, untar, uncompress, and expand interchangeably.)
betty compress /path/to/dir
<strong>iTunes:</strong>
betty mute itunes
betty unmute itunes
betty pause the music
betty resume itunes
betty stop my music
betty next song
betty prev track
betty what song is playing
(Note that the words song, track, music, etc. are interchangeable)
<strong>Fun:</strong>
betty go crazy
betty whats the meaning of life
...and more that are left for you to discover!
<strong>Map:</strong>
betty show me a map of mountain view
<strong>Meta:</strong>
betty what version are you (or just betty version)
betty whats your github again
<strong>Permissions:</strong>
betty give me permission to this directory
betty give anotheruser ownership of myfile.txt
<strong>Process:</strong>
betty show me all processes by root containing grep
betty show me all my processes containing netbio
<strong>Sizes:</strong>
betty show size for myfile.txt
<strong>Spotify:</strong>
betty play spotify
betty pause spotify
betty next spotify
betty previous spotify
<strong>User:</strong>
betty whats my username
betty whats my real name
betty whats my ip address
betty who else is logged in
betty whats my version of ruby
<strong>Web queries:</strong>
betty turn web on
betty please tell me what is the weather like in London
Betty seems very nice tool to lazy Linux users like me. Hope this tool will useful for you too.
Cheers!
Source:
