Flashcards in your terminal!

This script was inspired by a basic script that I had seen in a youtube video by a user named nixcasts. I like the Anki flashcard system, hence I'm working to replicate it in a simple manner using plain text documents and a shell script to aid my ability to study with active recall and spaced repetition.

This script is an expanded version of the one featured in This nixcasts Video

This expanded version will create a flash directory in .local/share/ and create an example deck.csv file for you.

You can have as many 'decks' in the flash directory as you want, and having directories and nested directories filled with .csv 'decks' will all work with this system. There is also no practical limit on the amount of 'cards' a 'deck' can hold.

Dependencies

This script uses:

• fzf
• bat (optional if you use flash -p cat to use the core utility instead of bat)
• (if on macOS the GNU core utilities are a dependency (namely the shuf utility))

Install these prior to running the script.

Installation

Windows

Untested, not sure if this script and its dependencies will work with WSL or not.

Mac

Will need to have brew to install dependencies listed below and also brew install coreutils to get the GNU core utilities as shuf is not in macOS by default.

You will need to put the script itself somewhere in your $PATH and execute it to initialize the setup.

Confirmed to work on macOS 10.14.6 more recent version welcome to test and file an issue/pull request to update README if other versions run the script as it should.

Linux

To utilize this script copy/move it to your ~/.local/bin/ folder or any place in your $PATH

Troubleshooting

Common issues will be added here as they arise during the stability stage of this script.

Checks:

• Is your system supported? see above
• Are all necessary dependencies installed?
• what version of bash do you have installed? or do you have bash installed?

Usage

The deck.csv file should have colon : separated values in 4 columns

Organized like this:

category:question:answer:0

First Field: The category of the flashcard

Second Field: The Question being asked

Third Field: The Hidden Answer

Fourth Field: The Score*

* The score determines how often and which cards are shown to you. A good idea is to start all your cards out at 0 so that all are served to you equally. As you study, review, and mark the more familiar cards as 'Mild' or 'Easy', more points will be added. The lower point cards are sorted to the top and the top 10 are taken, shuffled, and then drawn from. This way as you learn the material and the items you are less familiar with bubble up into the shuffled pool for drawing and those that go up in points due to increased familiarity go down because you're rating the material as easier.

Decks

If you would like to browse through a collection of decks readily available in your subject matter that are comaptible with fla.sh then you should check out Flash Decks.

Media (accepting contributions)

• Fla.sh Plain Text Flashcards in your Terminal
• Flash Cards In Your Terminal With Fla.sh
• Fla.sh++ A Comprehensive Walk Through of My Bash Flashcard Script Project
• Even Exam Prep Can Be Done From The Terminal With Fla.sh

Support

This is free, open-source software. If you'd like to support the development of future projects, or say thanks for this one, you can donate to me through paypal or buy me a coffee: