As I work on the command line, I like to find shortcuts for typing. Why type something longer when something shorter will work equally well?
One of my favorites is to use 3 letter abbreviations for account names. For example, let’s say I have the following account:
assets:BigBank:checking
Yes, I can type a command such as
hledger register assets:BigBank:checking
However, I can shorten the account name to just “che,” as in
hledger register che
Note, though sometimes 3 letters may not be enough to disambiguate the account you want. For example, suppose that you have the following 2 accounts:
assets:BigBank:checking
assets:CreditUnion:checking
In the above case, we will need something other than “che” to distinguish between the two. For example, we could use
ank:che for assets:BigBank:checking
and
ion:che for assets:CreditUnion:checking
In short, I like to keep it short at the command line by using abbreviations. Often 3 letters works fine for an account name. In that case, no need to type anything longer!