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 pcDuino Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get 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/ubuntu/.

$ 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/ubuntu/betty/main.rb"

Source bashrc file, let bashrc works.

$ source ~/.bashrc

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:

$ ubuntu

As you see above, my current user name is ubuntu. Well, now we can get the same result using betty as shown below.

$ betty whats my username

Sample output:

Betty: Running whoami
ubuntu

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
ubuntu

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/ubuntu/
test/home/ubuntu/test/
test/home/ubuntu/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/ubuntu/
test/home/ubuntu/test/
test/home/ubuntu/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.

Count:
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.)

Config:
betty change your name to Joe betty speak to me betty stop speaking to me 

Datetime: 
betty what time is it 
betty what is todays date 
betty what month is it 
betty whats today

Find: 
betty find me all files that contain california 

Internet: 
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 

iTunes:
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) 

Fun: 
betty go crazy betty whats the meaning of life ...and more that are left for you to discover! 

Map: 
betty show me a map of mountain view 

Meta: 
betty what version are you (or just betty version) betty whats your github again 

Permissions:
betty give me permission to this directory betty give anotheruser ownership of myfile.txt 

Process:
betty show me all processes by root containing grep betty show me all my processes containing netbio 

Sizes: 
betty show size for myfile.txt 

Spotify:
betty play spotify 
betty pause spotify 
betty next spotify 
betty previous spotify 

User:
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 
Web queries:
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:

• Betty Homepage