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

delete duplicate lines from a file and keep the order of the other lines
i wanted to delete all duplicate lines from .bash_history and keep the order of the other lines. the command cat's the file and adds line numbers, then sorts by the second column. afterwards uniq omits repeated lines, but skips the first field (the line number). then it sorts by the line numbers and at the end cuts the numbers off.

Duplicate several drives concurrently
If you have some drive imaging to do, you can boot into any liveCD and use a commodity machine. The drives will be written in parallel. To improve efficiency, specify a larger block size in dd: $dd if=/dev/sda bs=64k | tee >(dd of=/dev/sdb bs=64k) | dd of=/dev/sdc bs=64k To image more drives , insert them as additional arguments to tee: $dd if=/dev/sda | tee >(dd of=/dev/sdb) >(dd of=/dev/sdc) >(dd of=/dev/sdd) | dd of=/dev/sde

Produce a pseudo random password with given length in base 64
Of course you will have to install Digest::SHA and perl before this will work :) Maximum length is 43 for SHA256. If you need more, use SHA512 or the hexadecimal form: sha256_hex()

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Show what PID is listening on port 80 on Linux

Display a block of text with AWK

most used unix commands

Start a SOCKS proxy to avoid a restrictive firewall
You may go to Internet by means of your home ssh server. You must configure your local proxy to send traffic through the proxy. Many programs allows that: firefox, pidgin, skype, gnome, etc. Your home ssh server must listen in any of the ports permitted by your enterprise firewall. That usually includes 80 and 443.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously


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