Hidden Features Of…

Cool features of common tools hidden in plain sight

Today I stumbled upon a series of questions on Stack Overflow titled “Hidden Features Of %s” with subjects ranging from Python to Bash. I decided to collect some of my favorites here but I encourage you to read those questions in their entirety and learn from them.

Python

• Doctest — test code examples in docstrings
• Chained Comparison Operators
• Regex Debugging

More “Hidden Features Of Python”

Django

• os.path.dirname — don’t ever hardcode paths in settings.py again!
• django-annoying
• url names

More “Hidden Features Of Django”

Bash

• /dev/tcp and /dev/udp — my personal favorite
• sudo !!
• $RANDOM

More “Hidden Features Of Bash”

Batch

• PUSHD/POPD
• Better batch comments
• Variable substrings

More “Hidden Features Of Batch”