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

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May 19, 2015 - A Look At The New Commandlinefu
I've put together a short writeup on what kind of newness you can expect from the next iteration of clfu. Check it out here.
March 2, 2015 - New Management
I'm Jon, I'll be maintaining and improving clfu. Thanks to David for building such a great resource!
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awk, bash, curl, find, grep, Linux, sed
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Credits

Maintained by Jon H.

Site originally by David Winterbottom (user root).

Psst. Open beta.

Wow, didn't really expect you to read this far down. The latest iteration of the site is in open beta. It's a gentle open beta-- not in prime-time just yet. It's being hosted over at UpGuard (link) and you are more than welcome to give it a shot. Couple things:

  • » The open beta is running a copy of the database that will not carry over to the final version. Don't post anything you don't mind losing.
  • » If you wish to use your user account, you will probably need to reset your password.
Your feedback is appreciated via the form on the beta page. Thanks! -Jon & CLFU Team

All commands from sorted by
Terminal - All commands - 12,362 results
lynx -source http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/random | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' | head -1037 | tail -10 | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//' | sed '/^$/d' | head -2
2009-06-02 09:48:59
User: lxtips
Functions: head sed tail
Tags: sed lynx
-2
Up
Down
print random commandlinefu.com submission

ok I'm sure it's not pretty

Show sample output | Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
date -d '1 day ago'; date -d '11 hour ago'; date -d '2 hour ago - 3 minute'; date -d '16 hour'
2009-06-01 10:41:56
User: LrdShaper
Functions: date
Tags: Date manipulation Linux find dates
5
Up
Down
Get yesterday's date or a previous time

With this command you can get a previous or future date or time. Where can you use this? How about finding all files modified or created in the last 5 mins?

touch -t `echo $(date -d "5 minute ago" "+%G%m%d%H%M.%S")` me && find . -type f -newer me

List all directories created since last week?

touch -t `echo $(date -d "1 week ago" "+%G%m%d%H%M.%S")` me && find . -type d -cnewer me

I'm sure you can think of more ways to use it. Requires coreutils package.

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
postsuper -d ALL
2009-05-31 23:47:02
User: virtualshock
Tags: Postfix
2
Up
Down
Remove all mail in Postfix mail queue.
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
while [ i != 0 ]; do sleep 1 | dialog --clear --gauge "Quality: " 0 0 $(cat /proc/net/wireless | grep $WIRELESSINTERFACE | awk '{print $3}' | tr -d "."); done
2009-05-31 16:09:23
User: ncaio
Functions: awk cat grep sleep tr
1
Up
Down
Check wireless link quality with dialog box

The variable WIRELESSINTERFACE indicates your wireless interface

Comments (9) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
pdfinfo Virtualization_A_Beginner_Guide.pdf | awk /Pages/
2009-05-31 15:45:38
User: ncaio
Functions: awk
7
Up
Down
Get pages number of the pdf file
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
mkdir -p /cdrom/unnamed_cdrom ; mount -F hsfs -o ro `ls -al /dev/sr* |awk '{print "/dev/" $11}'` /cdrom/unnamed_cdrom
2009-05-31 08:42:20
User: felix001
Functions: awk mkdir mount
-2
Up
Down
Mount a CD-ROM on Solaris (SPARC)

This will allow you to mount a CD-ROM on Solaris SPARC 9 or lower. This will not work on Solaris 10 due to void and the volume management daemons.

www.fir3net.com

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
net rpc shutdown -I ipAddressOfWindowsPC -U username%password
2009-05-31 07:18:01
User: LrdShaper
Functions: shutdown
Tags: Linux windows
113
Up
Down
Shutdown a Windows machine from Linux

This will issue a shutdown command to the Windows machine. username must be an administrator on the Windows machine. Requires samba-common package installed. Other relevant commands are:

net rpc shutdown -r : reboot the Windows machine

net rpc abortshutdown : abort shutdown of the Windows machine

Type:

net rpc

to show all relevant commands

Comments (9) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
less -Rf <( cat <(ls -l --color=always) <(ls -ld --color=always .*) )
2009-05-30 23:51:16
User: asmoore82
Functions: cat less ls
2
Up
Down
Scrollable Colorized Long Listing - Hidden Files Sorted Last

To sort hidden files first, simply switch the two inner `ls` commands.

I have this aliased to `dira`

`dir` is aliased to the simpler version with no hidden files:

ls -l --color=always | less -R
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for f in `find ./ -name "*.zip"` ; do p=`pwd`; d=`dirname $f`; cd $d; b=`basename $f`; unzip $b; cd $p; done
2009-05-30 03:42:53
User: packetloss
Functions: cd
Tags: find unzip
-3
Up
Down
unzip all zip files under a current directory in the directory those files were in

unzips all zip files in any subdirectory under the current directory. The zip files are unzipped in their respective subdirs

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for i in `svn status | egrep '^(M|A)' | sed -r 's/\+\s+//' | awk '{ print $2 }'` ; do if [ ! -d $i ] ; then php -l $i ; fi ; done
2009-05-29 23:59:28
User: brephophagist
Functions: awk egrep sed
Tags: svn Linux PHP
0
Up
Down
Check syntax of all PHP files before an SVN commit

Really only valuable in a PHP-only project directory. This is using standard linux versions of the tools. On most older BSD variants of sed, use -E instead of -r. Or use: sed 's/\+[[:space:]]\{1,\}//' instead.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
dd if=/dev/sda5 bs=2048 conv=noerror,sync | gzip -fc | lftp -u user,passwd domain.tld -e "put /dev/stdin -o backup-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M).gz; quit"
2009-05-29 21:56:32
User: sputnick
Functions: dd gzip lftp
7
Up
Down
Backup sda5 partition to ftp ( using pipes and gziped backup )
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6
2009-05-29 18:52:12
User: unixmonkey4003
Functions: grep sed strings
Tags: macosx hardware display
-1
Up
Down
Show display type
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
gmetric -n $METRIC_NAME -v foo -t string -d 10
2009-05-29 14:21:24
User: root
Tags: ganglia
-1
Up
Down
Remove an old gmetric statistic

The -d flag sets the lifetime of a metric and defaults to 0 hence why old metrics continue to be graphed in the dashboard. Submitting a dummy value and short lifetime ensures that the metric is removed from the dashboard.

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more /var/adm/messages
2009-05-29 12:10:18
User: miccaman
Functions: more
Tags: solaris
-10
Up
Down
view solaris system logs

read system logs of sun solaris 9

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init 6
2009-05-29 07:44:05
User: miccaman
Functions: init
Tags: solaris Reboot
-11
Up
Down
sun solaris 9 complete restart

init states on solaris are numbered

init 0 boot with prompt

init 5 shutdown

init 6 reboot

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
awk 'BEGIN{srand()}{print rand(),$0}' SOMEFILE | sort -n | cut -d ' ' -f2-
2009-05-29 01:20:50
User: axelabs
Functions: awk cut sort
Tags: sort awk random
4
Up
Down
Randomize lines in a file

This appends a random number as a first filed of all lines in SOMEFILE then sorts by the first column and finally cuts of the random numbers.

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
awk 'BEGIN{size=5} {mod=NR%size; if(NR<=size){count++}else{sum-=array[mod]};sum+=$1;array[mod]=$1;print sum/count}' file.dat
2009-05-29 00:07:24
User: mungewell
Functions: awk
Tags: statistics awk graph
3
Up
Down
Awk: Perform a rolling average on a column of data

Sometimes jittery data hides trends, performing a rolling average can give a clearer view.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cat typescript | perl -pe 's/\e([^\[\]]|\[.*?[a-zA-Z]|\].*?\a)//g' | col -b > typescript-processed
2009-05-28 21:02:17
User: unixmonkey3987
Functions: cat col perl
13
Up
Down
'Fix' a typescript file created by the 'script' program to remove control characters

attribution: Thanks to repellent on perlmonks.org

source: http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=684459

Comments (5) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
zip -vr example.zip example/ -x "*.DS_Store"
2009-05-28 20:28:12
User: JadedEvan
4
Up
Down
Zip a directory on Mac OS X and ignore .DS_Store (metadata) directory

If you want to generate a cross-platform compatible zip file and ignore the Finder's hidden metadata directory

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
apropos keyword
2009-05-28 18:44:45
User: tobiasboon
Functions: apropos
-4
Up
Down
greps the man pages to find utilities
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
egrep -o '[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}' file.txt
2009-05-28 14:46:17
User: P17
Functions: egrep
Tags: egrep grep
4
Up
Down
Filter IPs out of files
Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find <directory path> -mtime +365 -and -not -type d -delete
2009-05-28 14:14:49
User: Gomex
Functions: find
11
Up
Down
List and delete files older than one year
Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
git grep -l "your grep string" | xargs gedit
2009-05-28 10:12:19
User: sfusion
Functions: grep xargs
3
Up
Down
grep across a git repo and open matching files in gedit
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/\t/ /g' {} \;
2009-05-28 10:10:21
User: sfusion
Functions: find sed
10
Up
Down
find and replace tabs for spaces within files recursively
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
grep -PL "\t" -r . | grep -v ".svn" | xargs sed -i 's/\t/ /g'
2009-05-28 08:52:14
User: root
Functions: grep sed xargs
Tags: Text Processing
3
Up
Down
Replace all tabs with spaces in an application

Note that this assumes the application is an SVN checkout and so we have to throw away all the .svn files before making the substitution.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate