All commands (14,187)

  • it does provide much more information , the owner , group , the size in byte , and the last modified time a file or directory was ls -al : list all in long format Show Sample Output


    -11
    ls -al
    eastwind · 2009-11-12 12:27:32 6
  • this is a reference to Antoine de St. Exupery's "The Little Prince" Show Sample Output


    6
    aptitude moo
    eastwind · 2009-11-12 12:24:01 7
  • Watch a TiVo file on your computer.


    0
    curl -s -c /tmp/cookie -k -u tivo:$MAK --digest http://$tivo/download/$filename | tivodecode -m $MAK -- - | mplayer - -cache-min 50 -cache 65536
    matthewbauer · 2009-11-11 23:32:23 3

  • 9
    setterm -powersave off -blank 0
    unixmonkey6999 · 2009-11-11 22:39:50 4
  • trying to copy all your dotfiles from one location to another, this may help Show Sample Output


    -2
    ls -a | egrep "^\.\w"
    kulor · 2009-11-11 18:19:56 12
  • cd to the folder containing the wav files and convert them all to ogg format. in my sample output i use the -a and -l flags to set the author and album title. to get the oggenc program in ubuntu linux run: sudo apt-get install oggenc Show Sample Output


    2
    oggenc *.wav
    nickleus · 2009-11-11 14:26:01 6
  • cd to the folder containing the wav files, then convert them all to flac. yeah baby! in ubuntu, to get the flac program just: sudo apt-get install flac flac file input formats are wav, aiff, raw, flac, oga and ogg Show Sample Output


    3
    flac --best *.wav
    nickleus · 2009-11-11 14:17:24 9

  • -1
    for i in `cat /etc/passwd | awk -F : '{ print $1 }';`; do passwd -e $i; done
    irraz · 2009-11-11 13:01:22 3
  • Create a tar file in multiple parts if it's to large for a single disk, your filesystem, etc. Rejoin later with `cat .tar.*|tar xf -` Show Sample Output


    17
    tar cf - <dir>|split -b<max_size>M - <name>.tar.
    dinomite · 2009-11-11 01:53:33 5
  • The magic is performed by the parameter -t Show Sample Output


    -2
    for F in $(find ./ -name "*.tgz") ; do tar -tvzf $F ; done
    alchandia · 2009-11-11 00:50:52 3
  • 355 # from zsh-users 356 edit_command_line () { 357 # edit current line in $EDITOR 358 local tmpfile=${TMPPREFIX:-/tmp/zsh}ecl$$ 359 360 print -R - "$PREBUFFER$BUFFER" >$tmpfile 361 exec 362 ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} $tmpfile 363 zle kill-buffer 364 BUFFER=${"$( 365 CURSOR=$#BUFFER 366 367 command rm -f $tmpfile 368 zle redisplay 369 } 370 zle -N edit_command_line


    -2
    zsh$ M-v
    bucciarati · 2009-11-10 23:02:56 11

  • -3
    dd if=/dev/<device location> | gzip -c /<path to backup location>/<disk image name>.img.gz
    awjrichards · 2009-11-10 22:57:51 9
  • The pstack command prints a stack trace of running processes without needing to attach a debugger, but what about core files? The answer, of course, is to use this command. Usage: gdbbt program corefile


    3
    alias gdbbt="gdb -q -n -ex bt -batch"
    TeacherTiger · 2009-11-10 22:56:59 654
  • I don't know if you've used sqsh before. But it has a handy feature that allows you to switch into vim to complete editing of whatever complicated SQL statement you are trying to run. But I got to thinking -- why doesn't bash have that? Well, it does. It's called '|'! Jk. Seriously, I'm pretty sure this flow of commands will revolutionize how I administer files. And b/c everything is a file on *nx based distros, well, it's handy. First, if your ls is aliased to ls --color=auto, then create another alias in your .bashrc: alias lsp='ls --color=none' Now, let's say you want to rename all files that begin with the prefix 'ras' to files that begin with a 'raster' prefix. You could do it with some bash substitution. But who remembers that? I remember vim macros because I can remember to press 'qa' and how to move around in vim. Plus, it's more incremental. You can check things along the way. That is the secret to development and probably the universe. So type something like: lsp | grep ras Are those all the files you need to move? If not, modify and re-grep. If so, pipe it to vim. lsp | grep ras | vim - Now run your vim macros to modify the first line. Assuming you use 'w' and 'b' to move around, etc., it should work for all lines. Hold down '@@', etc., until your list of files has been modified from ras_a.h ras_a.cpp ras_b.h ras_b.cpp to: mv ras_a.h raster_a.h mv ras_a.cpp raster_a.cpp mv ras_b.h raster_b.h mv ras_b.h raster_b.cpp then run :%!bash then run :q! then be like, whaaaaa? as you realize your workflow got a little more continuous. maybe. YMMV.


    -3
    vim -
    tmsh · 2009-11-10 22:25:36 12
  • This script creates date based backups of the files. It copies the files to the same place the original ones are but with an additional extension that is the timestamp of the copy on the following format: YearMonthDay-HourMinuteSecond Show Sample Output


    6
    backup() { for i in "$@"; do cp -va $i $i.$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S); done }
    polaco · 2009-11-10 20:59:45 6
  • This script will list all the files in the tarballs present on any folder or subfolder of the provided path. The while loop is for echoing the file name of the tarball before listing the files, so the tarball can be identified


    -2
    find <path> -name "*.tgz" -or -name "*.tar.gz" | while read file; do echo "$file: "; tar -tzf $file; done
    polaco · 2009-11-10 20:39:04 36
  • This command will copy a folder tree (keeping the parent folders) through ssh. It will: - compress the data - stream the compressed data through ssh - decompress the data on the local folder This command will take no additional space on the host machine (no need to create compressed tar files, transfer it and then delete it on the host). There is some situations (like mirroring a remote machine) where you simply cant wait for a huge time taking scp command or cant compress the data to a tarball on the host because of file system space limitation, so this command can do the job quite well. This command performs very well mainly when a lot of data is involved in the process. If you copying a low amount of data, use scp instead (easier to type) Show Sample Output


    12
    ssh <host> 'tar -cz /<folder>/<subfolder>' | tar -xvz
    polaco · 2009-11-10 20:06:47 8

  • 0
    egrep -v "^[[:blank:]]*($|#|//|/\*| \*|\*/)" somefile
    sdadh01 · 2009-11-10 18:49:19 5
  • Find files recursively that were updated in the last hour ignoring SVN files and folders. Incase you do a full svn up on accident.


    2
    find . -mmin -60 -not -path "*svn*" -print|more
    bloodykis · 2009-11-10 18:34:53 7
  • Strips comments from at least bash and php scripts. Normal # and // as well as php block comments removes all of the: empty/blank lines lines beginning with # lines beginning with // lines beginning with /* lines beginning with a space and then * lines beginning with */ It also deletes the lines if there's whitespace before any of the above. Add an alias to use in .bashrc like this: alias stripcomments="sed -e '/^[[:blank:]]*#/d; s/[[:blank:]][[:blank:]]*#.*//' -e '/^$/d' -e '/^\/\/.*/d' -e '/^\/\*/d;/^ \* /d;/^ \*\//d'"


    -3
    sed -e '/^[[:blank:]]*#/d; s/[[:blank:]][[:blank:]]*#.*//' -e '/^$/d' -e '/^\/\/.*/d' -e '/^\/\*/d;/^ \* /d;/^ \*\//d' /a/file/with/comments
    unixmonkey6951 · 2009-11-10 17:47:22 10
  • The legend in the first column: i = installed p = installable Show Sample Output


    -6
    aptitude search NAME
    CafeNinja · 2009-11-10 11:23:18 5
  • The command as given would create the file "/result_path/result.tar.gz" with the contents of the target folder including permissions and sub- folder structure. Show Sample Output


    0
    tar pzcvf /result_path/result.tar.gz /target_path/target_folder
    CafeNinja · 2009-11-10 11:17:00 5
  • will decode a mime message. usefull when you receive some email and file attachment that cant be read.


    3
    munpack file.txt
    Diceroll · 2009-11-10 10:53:49 4
  • search ubuntu's remote package source repositories for a specific program to see which package contains it Show Sample Output


    7
    apt-file find bin/programname
    nickleus · 2009-11-10 10:21:45 6
  • require the pdftk package


    8
    pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output 123.pdf
    eastwind · 2009-11-10 10:07:37 4
  • ‹ First  < 428 429 430 431 432 >  Last ›

What's this?

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.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Key binding to search commandlinefu.com
This is a simple bash function and a key binding that uses commandlinefu's simple and easy search API. It prompts for a search term, then it uses curl to search commandline fu, and highlights the search results with less.

DVD-Rip
Make backups of your home DVDs easily. Other: mencoder dvd://1 -o "$targetDir/$dvdTitle.avi" -aid "$audioID" -ovc x264 -x264encopts qp=26:frameref=3:bframes=15:direct_pred=auto:cabac:weight_b:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=esa:me_range=24:subq=7:mixed_refs:trellis=2:bitrate=1000:nofast_pskip:threads=0 -oac mp3lame

Find out how old a web page is
I used to use the Firefox "View page info" feature a lot to determine how stale the web page I was looking at was. Now that I use mostly Chrome I miss that feature, so here is a command line alternative using wget. The -S says to display the server response, the --spider says to not download any files/pages, just fetch the header. The output goes to stderr, so to grep it you use 2>&1 to combine the stderr stream with stdout, the pipe that to grep for Last-Modified. You can use curl instead if you have it installed, like this: $ curl --head -s http://osswin.sourceforge.net | grep Mod

Delete a file/directory walking subdirectories (bash4 or zsh)

ps with parent/child process tree
Shows a tree view of parent to child processes in the output of ps (linux). Similar output can be achieved with pstree (also linux) or ptree (Solaris).

Edit Camera Model in metadata:

Fix borked character coding in a tty.
Often you find some tty programs are messed up and confused about character encoding - 'man' is a common problem and sometimes displays weird characters for apostrophes, hyphens etc etc. Another class of programs that suffer from this are those that try to use the line drawing characters - eg RedHat's tty system admin functions such as system-config-firewall-tui system-config-network-tui etc. Adding 'LC_ALL=C' fixes most of these problems (as long as you want English! Perhaps speakers of other languages can add a comment here). For bonus points, I've added the '-c' option to the man command so that it ignores it's cache and re-computes the man page using the C locale.

back ssh from firewalled hosts
host B (you) redirects a modem port (62220) to his local ssh. host A is a remote machine (the ones that issues the ssh cmd). once connected port 5497 is in listening mode on host B. host B just do a ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 5497 -l user and reaches the remote host'ssh. This can be used also for vnc and so on.

Find the package that installed a command

Convert CSV to JSON - Python3 and Bash function
Based / Inspired by malathion's below command http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/20528/convert-csv-to-json Is written for python3 and is very easy to use csv2json *csv will convert all files ending in csv to json eg csv2json file.csv will output a file to file.json Validity of json tested in python3 and below site https://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: