Learn the periodic table

5 min read

PERIODIC-TABLE-CLI

An interactive periodic table accessible from the CLI might sound like sci-fi, but is pure joy for relapsed chemistry nerds like Shashank Sharma.

OUR EXPERT

Shashank Sharma is a trial lawyer in New Delhi and an avid Arch user. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years, and lawyering for 10. t might sound we’re joking, but if you think about it, the periodic table is one of the most I easily recognised icons in the world. Certainly on a par with lab coats, stethoscopes, thermometers and Lego pieces. Anyone who looks at it knows exactly what it is. Some people are even required to memorise it as part of their studies, while others still quote it as a display of their nerd quotient. Although you could quickly do an online search to look up elements should the need ever arise, offline utilities have the advantage of offering pertinent information without overloading you with data.

Released under the MIT licence, Periodic-table-cli is an interactive utility that can help you master the 118 elements known to man. In addition to the Node.js offering discussed on the project’s GitHub page, the developer also publishes a Python alternative.

Because of its esoteric nature, you understandably won’t find Periodic-table-cli in the software repositories of desktop distributions. However, if your distro is already configured for Node.js or Python packages, you can use the npm install –global periodic-table-cli or pip install periodic-table-cli command to install it.

CLI WORDLE

The terminal is a vastly robust resource that many use to accomplish a variety of tasks. In addition to listening to music, manipulating PDF files, reading emails, and editing image and video files, you can also learn how to type better, perform security audits, work with encrypted files, and much more, as discussed by this author over the past several years. But if you ever need a break from all that, you can also play games such as Wordle from the comfort of the CLI.

Written in C and released under the MIT licence, Cwordle is a nifty utility that’s endless fun for anyone who’s tired of hangman and is ready for an alternative dictionary game.

Clone the git repository with the git clone https://github.com/velorek1/cwordle.git command and navigate into the downloaded cwordle/ directory. Next, run cmake . followed by the sudo make install command to install the word game.

You can now launch Cwordle with the cwordle command. When you type in your guess word, if a letter is in the correct position, it’s highlighted in green. If the letter occurs in the word but is in the incorrect position, it’s marked in orange. You have six attempts at guessing the correct word. If you fail, Cwordle displays the correct word and then quits.