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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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Update Ping.fm status
Updates your Ping.fm status and websites supported by ping.fm (like twitter, facebook, and google talk).

Sort files in folders alphabetically
Creates one letter folders in the current directory and moves files with corresponding initial in the folder.

Add prefix onto filenames
Best to try first with -n flag, to preview

securely erase unused blocks in a partition
This command securely erases all the unused blocks on a partition. The unused blocks are the "free space" on the partition. Some of these blocks will contain data from previously deleted files. You might want to use this if you are given access to an old computer and you do not know its provenance. The command could be used while booted from a LiveCD to clear freespace space on old HD. On modern Linux LiveCDs, the "ntfs-3g" system provides ReadWrite access to NTFS partitions thus enabling this method to also be used on Wind'ohs drives. NB depending on the size of the partition, this command could take a while to complete.

netstat with group by (ip adress)
Same as the rest, but handle IPv6 short IPs. Also, sort in the order that you're probably looking for.

Open a file in a GTK+ dialog window
I use zenity because it's a rewrite of gdialog and also replaces gmessage and has more useful options. Using --text-info allows you to select and copy the text to your clipboard. To see a file in a list dialog: cat /etc/passwd | zenity --width 800 --height 600 --list --column Entries If you don't have zenity, you'll have to download it via apt-get install zenity, etc.

updatedb for MAC OSX
MAC OSX doesn't come with an updatedb command by default, this will emulate the updatedb thats on a typical Linux OS. Simply add it to your ~/.bash_profile

Reboot as a different OS in Grub
This will reboot as the Grub 2 option.

Turn shell tracing and verbosity (set -xv) on/off with 1 command!
Turn shell tracing and verbosity (set -xv) on/off in any Bourne-type shell If either -x or -v is set, the function turns them both off. If neither is on, both are turned on.


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