All commands (14,187)

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

Tar files matching a certain wildcard
This is a shortcut to tar up all files matching a wildcard. Tar doesn't have the --include (apparently).

get you public ip address
Relies on ifconfig.me functioning. It's about as easy as it gets, and memorable to old geeks too.

watch the previous command
If you just executed some long command, like "ps -aefww | grep -i [m]yProcess", and if you don't want to retype it or cycle backwards in history and waste time quoting it, then you can use history substitution.

Rename files in batch

List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location
Simple and easy to remember. -h is human, -d1 = depth 1. disk usage, human, depth 1

Pipe the result of a command to IRC (channel or query)
$ command | my_irc Pipe whatever you want to this function, it will, if everything goes well, be redirected to a channel or a user on an IRC server. Please note that : - I am not responsible of flood excesses you might provoke. - that function does not reply to PINGs from the server. That's the reason why I first write in a temporary file. Indeed, I don't want to wait for inputs while being connected to the server. However, according to the configuration of the server and the length of your file, you may timeout before finishing. - Concerning the server, the variable content must be on the form "irc.server.org 6667" (or any other port). If you want to make some tests, you can also create a fake IRC server on "localhost 55555" by using $ netcat -l -p 55555 - Concerning the target, you can choose a channel (beginning with a '#' like "#chan") or a user (like "user") - The other variables have obvious names.

translate what is in the clipboard in english and write it to the terminal
Uses google api to translate, you can modify the language in which translate modifying the parameter "langpair=|en", the format is language input|language output.

Rotate a video file by 90 degrees CW

Remove today's Debian installed packages
Adapted using your usefull comments !

Display duplicated lines in a file
Displays the duplicated lines in a file and their occuring frequency.


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: