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Print text string vertically, one character per line.
Define a function $ vert () { echo $1 | grep -o '.'; } Use it to print some column headers $ paste

use vim to get colorful diff output
:q to quit

Generate a random password 30 characters long
Find random strings within /dev/urandom. Using grep filter to just Alphanumeric characters, and then print the first 30 and remove all the line feeds.

get xclip to own the clipboard contents
"Copying" things to the X clipboard doesn't normally create a copy. Rather the data to be 'copied' is referenced. This means that if the application that you 'copied' stuff from is closed, that data is lost. If the application that you 'copied' from is suspended with CTRL-Z, there could be some issues if you try to paste it into something. This command will create a copy of referenced data and have xclip be the provider of it, so you can then go ahead and close the app that contains the original information. Caveat: I'm not sure if this is binary-safe (though i would expect it to be), and don't know what would happen if you used it to clip a 20 meg gimp image. This technique becomes more convenient if you set it up as an action in a clipboard manager (eg klipper, parcellite). Some of these applets can take automatic action based on a variety of parameters, so you could probably just get it to always own the clipped data whenever data is clipped.

Fetch the current human population of Earth
They are using json now

Rsync a directory excluding pesky .svn dirs

repeat any string or char n times without spaces between
(here is character '+' repeated 80 times) Sometimes needed to enhance the title of the script.

grep binary (hexadecimal) patterns
-P activates the Perl regular expression mode.

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

check open ports without netstat or lsof


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