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

show hidden chars in vi

Copy a directory recursively without data/files

search office documents for credit card numbers and social security number SSN docx xlsx
# CC with SSN dash ( low false positive only match ###-##-#### not any 8digi number ) $ find . -iname "*.???x" -type f -exec unzip -p '{}' '*' \; | sed -e 's/]\{1,\}>/ /g; s/[^[:print:]]\{1,\}/ /g' | egrep "\b4[0-9]{12}(?:[0-9]{3})?\b|\b5[1-5][0-9]{14}\b|\b6011[0-9]{14}\b|\b3(?:0[0-5]\b|\b[68][0-9])[0-9]{11}\b|\b3[47][0-9]{13}\b|\b[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}\b" $ rmccurdyDOTcom

Remove a line from a file using sed (useful for updating known SSH server keys when they change)
For example, to remove line 5 from foo, type: vi +5d +wq foo

cp the file
Copy the file with the given .extension at the source file's location. Eliminates the typing of long paths again and again.

Fork Bomb for Windows
Quick and dirty forkbomb for all flavors of windows Do not use in production. Replace start with a command of your choice, this will just open a new command prompt and is pretty tricky to stop once started

Change newline to space in a file just using echo
Changing newline to spaces using just echo

Create a visually twisted effect by alternating the direction of the "staples" effect vertically. The effect is achieved by moving odd-numbered lines from right to left and even-numbered lines from left to right.
The effect is achieved by moving odd-numbered lines from right to left and even-numbered lines from left to right. For odd-numbered lines (with an index j), the ((j + i) % 2 == 0) condition is satisfied. In this case, the line width is set to i, resulting in the line moving from left to right. For even-numbered lines, the ((j + i) % 2 == 0) condition is not satisfied. The line width is set to $(tput cols) - i, causing the line to move from right to left. This alternating direction of movement creates a twisted visual effect as the lines appear to move in opposite directions. The code runs in a continuous loop, repeatedly updating the lines with changing background colors. There is a slight pause of 0.05 seconds between each iteration to control the speed of the animation.

Given $PID, print all child processes on stdout
Simpler.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously


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: