JPKCom DB

Cheat Sheets — Tips & Tricks

Knacks for the Cheat Sheets: search faster, use the two search fields correctly, deep links, pitfalls, and combining with other JPKCom tools.

Back to the overview: Cheat Sheets · Open the tool live: www.jpkc.com/tools/cheatsheet/

The manual explains every feature, the examples show the workflows. This page is about the surrounding stuff: how to find things faster, which quirk trips people up, and how the sheets play with the other JPKCom tools.

Don't confuse the two search fields

The most common stumbling block: there are two search fields, and they do different things.

  • The field inside the Cheat Sheet dropdown (Search cheat sheets…) only searches sheet names — i.e. "which tool". It gets you from "I need something about containers" to the Docker sheet.
  • The Search field in the controls card searches the commands of the currently loaded sheet — i.e. "which command". It gets you from within Docker to docker exec.

There is no search that spans the commands of all 219 sheets at once. So the flow is always two-step: pick the tool first, then filter the command. Internalize that and you search twice as fast.

Search faster

  • The command search also matches descriptions. It's a full-text substring search over an entry's entire visible text. So you don't need to know the exact command — a keyword from the explanation (undo, compress, permission) often gets you there just as well.
  • Keyboard first in the dropdown. Open the Cheat Sheet dropdown, type two or three letters, then Down arrow and Enter — without touching the mouse. Escape closes the dropdown again.
  • The × button only resets the command search, not the sheet. Handy when you're checking several commands in a row within the same sheet.
  • Categories as a map. When you don't know the tool name, the grouping helps: backup tools sit together under Remote & Backup, text tools under Text Processing — good for discovering alternatives (restic vs. borgbackup, grep and its relatives).
  • Bookmark your regulars. Every sheet has its own URL via the hash (#git, #docker, #nginx). A browser bookmark straight on the hash link drops you into the right sheet with one click.
  • Share the exact cheat sheet. Instead of "go check the Cheat Sheets," you send …/tools/cheatsheet/#ssh — the other person lands right on target.
  • The hash doesn't clutter history. Sheet switches are set via replaceState, so your back button stays usable even as you click through many sheets.

Pitfalls from practice

  • Copied commands contain placeholders verbatim. <url>, <name>, <branch> are copied exactly as written — they're meant as a fill-in template, not a runnable command. Fill them in before running. If you want an immediately runnable invocation, copy the example block, not the generic command line above it.
  • The syntax highlighting is shell-oriented. Examples are colored as shell/Bash syntax (highlight.js, theme github-dark). For examples that are really configuration or another language, the coloring is purely cosmetic — trust the text, not the color.
  • Only one sheet visible at a time. You can't show two sheets side by side. To compare apt and dnf, open them in two browser tabs (thanks to deep links, each has its own URL).
  • Pure reference, not a playground. The tool runs nothing and validates nothing. It shows you the syntax — you test in your own terminal.
  • Sheets load on demand. The first time you open a sheet there's a brief fetch; after that it's cached and instant. On a network problem you get an error notice instead of content — just reload.

Combine with other JPKCom tools

The Cheat Sheets are the fast lookup part; for working on code and regular expressions there are matching interactive tools:

  • Regex tool — the "Regex Reference" sheet gives you the syntax, the regex tool lets you test the expression against real text live. Look it up first, then try it out.
  • Source tool — when you build a longer pipeline out of a sed, awk, or jq command, the source tool helps you view and tidy the result.
  • Coder tool — commands like openssl, curl, or base64 often work with encoded values; the coder tool encodes and decodes Base64, URL, JWT, and more right in the browser.

A curiosity on the side: among the 219 sheets, the Development category even includes a Claude Code sheet — the command-line reference for the AI coding assistant. The tool itself, however, has no AI feature: it's a classic, static reference that you search and copy from.

More context: the overview for the big picture, the manual for every feature, and the examples for the step-by-step workflows. You can try all of it right in the tool.