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

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Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy

let the cow suggest some commit messages for you
No need to parse html page, website gives us a txt file :)

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Squish repeated delimiters into one
This can be particularly useful used in conjunction with a following cut command like $echo "hello::::there" | tr -s ':' | cut -d':' -f2 which prints 'there'. Much easier that guessing at -f values for cut. I know 'tr -s' is used in lots of commands here already but I just figured out the -s flag and thought it deserved to be highlighted :)

recursive search and replace old with new string, inside files
Using -Z with grep and -0 with xargs handles file names with spaces and special characters.

cd to (or operate on) a file across parallel directories
This is useful for quickly jumping around branches in a file system, or operating on a parellel file. This is tested in bash. cd to (substitute in PWD, a for b) where PWD is the bash environmental variable for the "working directory"

Find the package that installed a command

Numeric zero padding file rename
rename file name with fixed length nomeric format pattern

Recursively search and replace old with new string, inside every instance of filename.ext
This is a slightly modified version of http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4283/recursive-search-and-replace-old-with-new-string-inside-files (which did not work due to incorrect syntax) with the added option to sed inside only files named filename.ext

gpg decrypt several files
Change directory (cd) to the directory where all your encrypted files are placed, and then run the command - then you are asked to insert your secret gpg password - ubuntu 8.04


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