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I'm typing dozens of different values every day. I repeat typing the same set of values every day, including passwords, IPs and long file paths.

Say I'm typing a command in the terminal and need to insert a value I know the key of. With the tool I'm looking for, I could press an hotkey, a small window would show, I'll type the key or part of it into that window, then I'll press enter and the value will be typed into the terminal (or whichever window I've been working with before).

Do you know of such or similar tool?

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Maybe the problem is with your workflow ? If you keep on manually referencing the same data it may be hint that you could automate your life more. I keep a git repo with bunch of bash, python and assorted snippets in it. A particular task quickly grows a small script. Jobs tend to "clump" anyway and the particular values you need are persisted in the script.

Many tools and files are available for recording key value pairs, in one form or the other, aliases, /etc/hosts, environment variables, general bash scripting etc. Maybe the level of generality you think you need with a general lookup like you propose is of limited utility, given that specific solutions already exists.

Having said that, why don't you cook up a little tool to scratch your itch and see if others find it usefull ?

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Yes, I could use more scripts. The few I wrote, have significantly reduced the amount of commands and constants I need to remember and type. /etc/hosts solves the need to remember IPs, except when configuring an external service (like domain management, which in my case is done infrequently). If I wrote more scripts, only passwords would be a bother to remember. So I think I'll write more scripts and get a password manager. Thanks for the advice. – Zippoxer Nov 21 '12 at 13:54

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