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Quickly create simple text file from command line w/o using vi/emacs
1. Issue command 2. After angled bracket appears, enter file contents 3. When done, type "EOF"

convert a pdf to jpeg
Converts a .pdf to .jpg . should work with jpeg | tiff | png | gif | jp2 | pict | bmp | qtif | psd | sgi | tga

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"

Edit the last or previous command line in an editor then execute
If you would like to edit a previous command, which might be long and complicated, you can use the fc (I think it stands for fix command). Invoke fc alone will edit the last command using the default editor (specified by $FCEDIT, $EDITOR, or emacs, in that order). After you make the changes in the editor, save and exit to execute that command. The fc command is more flexible than what I have described. Please 'man bash' for more information.

Paste the contents of OS X clipboard into a new text file

Exit shell faster
Use ^D instead of exit. Also ^D ends input stream when you use terminal for typing into standard input.

list files recursively by size

Terminal - Show directories in the PATH, one per line with sed and bash3.X `here string'
another method : awk '{gsub(/:/, "\n");print}'

copy/mkdir and automatically create parent directories
The --parents option will cause cp or mkdir to automatically create the parent directory structure. $mkdir --parents /one/two/three/dir will create /one, /one/two, and /one/two/three as needed before creating dir. cp will copy files with their full directory structure into the target directory with this option. Thanks to Peter Leung at: http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2007/11/use-of-parents-flag-in-mkdir-and-c.html which has good examples of usage.

Preserve colors when piping tree to less


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