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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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Read aloud a text file in Mac OS X

find and delete empty directories recursively
this will show the names of the deleted directories, and will delete directories that only no files, only empty directories.

ls -qahlSr # list all files in size order - largest last
I find it useful, when cleaning up deleting unwanted files to make more space, to list in size order so I can delete the largest first. Note that using "q" shows files with non-printing characters in name. In this sample output (above), I found two copies of the same iso file both of which are immediate "delete candidates" for me.

check the status of 'dd' in progress (OS X)
Sends SIGINFO to the process. This is a BSD feature OS X inherited. You must have the terminal window executing dd selected when entering CTRL + T for this to work.

Get free RAM in %

Print the IPv4 address of a given interface

Check which modules your PHP is using

Make vim open in tabs by default (save to .profile)
I always add this to my .profile rc so I can do things like: "vim *.c" and the files are opened in tabs.

Creating ISO Images from CDs/DVDs
create an iso from your cd/dvd-rom device . You need to umount /dev/cdrom before using the cli

Use a decoy while scanning ports to avoid getting caught by the sys admin :9
Scan for open ports on the target device/computer (192.168.0.10) while setting up a decoy address (192.168.0.2). This will show the decoy ip address instead of your ip in targets security logs. Decoy address needs to be alive. Check the targets security log at /var/log/secure to make sure it worked.


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