Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

World cup college
Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2009-09-12 - Email updates now available
You can now enable email updates to let you know each time you're command is commented on.
2009-07-11 - API and javascript blog widget now available
A simple API has been released, allowing commands to be retrieved in various formats. This also allows commands to be embedded on blogs/homepages.
2009-05-17 - Added duplicate suggestions to the new command form
When adding a new command, a quick background search is performed to make sure you're not duplicating a command already in the system.
2009-05-17 - Now using Gravatars for comments
Comments now display users' gravatars with the default setting as a random monster.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

All commands

All commands from sorted by
Terminal - All commands - 4,291 results
location='New York City'; curl -s "http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=$(php -r "echo urlencode('$location');")" | sed 's|.*<temp_f data="\([^"]*\)"/>.*|\1|'
2010-02-08 23:06:48
User: matthewbauer
Functions: echo sed
Tags: google api weather temperature fahrenheit
0
Up
Down
Weather on the Command line

Will return temperature in Fahrenheit of a location (New York City in example).

Uses a Google API.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
Split() { eval "$1=( \"$(echo "${!1}" | sed "s/$2/\" \"/g")\" )"; }
2010-02-08 17:41:59
User: frans
Functions: eval
2
Up
Down
Function to split a string into an array

It works as a method applicated to a variable, converts the string variable into an array

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
smenu() ( IFS=',' ; select x in $*; do echo "$x" | xsel -i; done )
2010-02-08 15:33:53
User: bartonski
Functions: echo
Tags: xsel select
1
Up
Down
Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.

The function will take a comma separated list of items to be 'selected' by xsel -i:

smenu "First item to paste,Paste me #2,Third menu item"

You will then be prompted to choose one of the menu items. After you choose, you will be able to paste the string by clicking the middle mouse button.

The menu will keep prompting you to choose menu items until you break out with Control-C.

Show sample output | Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ls . | xargs file | grep text | sed "s/\(.*\):.*/\1/" | xargs gedit
2010-02-08 02:06:40
User: matthewbauer
Functions: file grep ls sed xargs
Tags: xargs gedit
-1
Up
Down
Edit all "text" files (exclude binary and directories) in the current directory
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
echo "I'm going to paste this into WINDERS XP" | xsel -i
2010-02-08 00:23:43
User: bartonski
Functions: echo
Tags: X xsel putty XMing
2
Up
Down
Pipe text from shell to windows cut and paste buffer using PuTTY and XMing.

Set up X forwarding in PuTTY, with X display location set to :0.0

Launch PuTTY ssh session.

Launch Xming. Make sure that display is set to :0.0 (this is default).

echo "I'm going to paste this into WINDERS XP" | xsel -i

will insert the string into the windows cut and paste buffer.

Thanks to Dennis Williamson at stackoverflow.com for sharing...

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find -type f -regex ".*\.\(js\|php\|inc\|htm[l]?\|css\)$" -exec grep -il 'searchstring' '{}' +
2010-02-07 23:41:00
User: tuxilicious
Functions: find grep
Tags: find grep search
0
Up
Down
Recursively search a directory tree for all .php .inc .html .htm .css .js files for a certain string
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
php -r 'echo md5("password") . "\n";'
2010-02-07 21:39:07
User: mvrilo
Tags: Encryption password PHP md5
-1
Up
Down
Use php and md5 to generate a password

another alternative to encrypt strings

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
@echo off && sc create CmdAsSystem type= own type= interact binPath= "cmd /c start cmd /k (cd c:\ ^& color ec ^& title ***** SYSTEM *****)" && net start CmdAsSystem && sc delete CmdAsSystem
2010-02-07 15:28:28
User: willemijns
-1
Up
Down
run as system on windows
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f \( -name "*.js" -o -name "*.php" -o -name "*.inc" -o -name "*.html" -o -name "*.htm" -o -name "*.css" \) -exec grep -il 'searchString' {} \;
2010-02-07 15:28:20
User: niels_bom
Functions: find grep
Tags: find grep search
-1
Up
Down
Recursively search a directory tree for all .php .inc .html .htm .css .js files for a certain string

Use find to recursively make a list of all files from the current directory and downwards. The files have to have an extension of the ones listed. Then for every file found, grep it for 'searchString', returns the filename if searchString is found.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
curl -i -m 60 -k -u user:password 'https://updates.opendns.com/account/ddns.php?'
2010-02-07 02:40:38
User: m33600
2
Up
Down
OpenDns IP update via curl

Your IP is resolved by OpenDns Server (like a caller ID telephone, every server knows who is calling ;-)

Change user:password by yours

Be Happy

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
<(!!)
2010-02-06 18:35:10
User: drewk
Tags: history bash redirection
2
Up
Down
Use bash history with process substitution

Bash has a great history system of its commands accessed by the ! built-in history expansion operator (documented elsewhere on this site or on the web). You can combine the ! operator inside the process redirection

Very handy.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
alias wetter='w3m -dump -T text/html http://wetter.orf.at/stm/grazuni/ | grep --color "*"'
2010-02-06 17:39:03
User: bubo
Functions: alias grep
-2
Up
Down
weather for the city of Graz
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
echo "There are $(($(date +%j -d"Dec 31, $(date +%Y)")-$(date +%j))) left in year $(date +%Y)."
2010-02-06 00:15:40
User: unixhome
Functions: date echo
3
Up
Down
How many days until the end of the year
Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
lynx -dump http://api.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXCurrentObXML.asp?ID=KCALOSAN32 | grep GMT | awk '{print $3}'
2010-02-05 19:17:18
User: editorreilly
Functions: awk grep
4
Up
Down
Weather on the Command line

Get your weather from a weather station just blocks from your home. Go to http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/ and find a weather station near you. Click on a temperature bubble for that area. When the window pops up, click on hypertext link with the station ID, then on the bottom right of the page, click on the Current Conditions XML. Thats your link! Good luck!

Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
/bin/bash echo -n "Let's POST MORE, PLEASE!"
2010-02-05 18:52:45
User: editorreilly
Functions: echo
-13
Up
Down
Getting involved!!

I absolutely love this website, and appreciate every contribution. This is the first place I go when I'm stuck, you all have some great ideas. But contributions seem to be slipping a little. If all of us could contribute more code from time to time, this site would be absolutely incredible. Since I'm a relative newcomer to commandline-fu, I don't have the knowledge to contribute much, but I will do what I can.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
/usr/bin/links --source http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/zone/md/mdz009.txt
2010-02-05 17:44:45
User: vargasmas
0
Up
Down
Status of Snow Armageddon in Washington DC Metro from the command line...

The Washington DC Metro area is not accustomed to getting large snow storms...

http://snowpocalypsedc.com/

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -name <pattern> -ls | awk 'BEGIN {i=0}; {i=i+$7}; END {print i}'
2010-02-05 14:47:27
User: danam
Functions: awk find
Tags: disk usage
2
Up
Down
Determine space taken by files of certain type

Just how much space are those zillions of database logs taking up ? How much will you gain on a compression rate of say 80% ? This little line gives you a good start for your calculations.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
svn log --revision {`date +%Y-%m-%d`}:HEAD
2010-02-05 08:47:14
User: reaper
2
Up
Down
show todays svn log

Shows the todays svn log. Perfect for alias usage I assume.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
xset r rate 250 120
2010-02-04 23:19:35
User: cbrinker
2
Up
Down
Speed up the keyboard repeat rate in X server
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
netstat -in
2010-02-04 15:24:58
User: mobidyc
Functions: netstat
Tags: ifconfig netstat hp-ux
0
Up
Down
Equivalent to ifconfig -a in HPUX
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find /dev/vg00 -type b |while read L; do lvextend -m 1 $L /dev/disk/<disk> ; done
2010-02-04 15:18:26
User: mobidyc
Functions: find read
Tags: hp-ux lvm
0
Up
Down
Mirror every lvol in vg00 in hp-ux 11.31
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find /path/to/dir -type f -printf "%T@|%p\n" 2>/dev/null | sort -n | tail -n 1| awk -F\| '{print $2}'
2010-02-04 15:13:27
User: glennie
Functions: awk find sort tail
Tags: bash find files recursive
1
Up
Down
A function to find the newest file in a directory
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
newest () { find ${1:-\.} -type f |xargs ls -lrt ; }
2010-02-04 14:52:17
User: mobidyc
Functions: find ls xargs
Tags: bash find files recursive
5
Up
Down
A function to find the newest file in a directory
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
set-proxy () { P=webproxy:1234; DU="fred"; read -p "username[$DU]:" USER; printf "%b"; UN=${USER:-$DU}; read -s -p "password:" PASS; printf "%b" "\n"; export http_proxy="http://${UN}:${PASS}@$P/"; export ftp_proxy="http://${UN}:${PASS}@$P/"; }
2010-02-04 13:12:59
User: shadycraig
Functions: export printf read set
Tags: wget password proxy http_proxy
2
Up
Down
Configuring proxy client on terminal without leaving password on screen or in bash_history

Prompts the user for username and password, that are then exported to http_proxy for use by wget, yum etc

Default user, webproxy and port are used.

Using this script prevent the cleartext user and pass being in your bash_history and on-screen

Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
newest () { DIR=${1:-'.'}; CANDIDATE=`find $DIR -type f|head -n1`; while [[ ! -z $CANDIDATE ]]; do BEST=$CANDIDATE; CANDIDATE=`find $DIR -newer "$BEST" -type f|head -n1`; done; echo "$BEST"; }
2010-02-04 12:40:44
User: shadycraig
Functions: echo head
Tags: bash find files recursive
1
Up
Down
A function to find the newest file in a directory

Works recusivley in the specified dir or '.' if none given.

Repeatedly calls 'find' to find a newer file, when no newer files exist you have the newest.

In this case 'newest' means most recently modified. To find the most recently created change -newer to -cnewer.

Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate