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

Benchmark SQL Query
Benchmark a SQL query against MySQL Server. The example runs the query 10 times, and you get the average runtime in the output. To ensure that the query does not get cached, use `RESET QUERY CACHE;` on top in the query file.

Add temporary <1m entries to old cron
Old cron doesn't allow periods

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Check your unread Gmail from the command line
Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: $ curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '' '{for (i=2; i

Revert an SVN file to previous revision
Kudos to xakon.

Check if a string is into a variable
Returns true (0) if the string is into $var, or false (1) if not.

Generate SHA1 hash for each file in a list
All output is placed in file SHA1SUMS which you can later check with 'sha1sum --check'. Works on most Linux distros where 'sha1sum' is installed.

Number of .... indicate how far down to cd
Use dots to cd down directories instead of having to remember all of the pesky back slashes! Better yet, works on even and odd number of dots! Now, just estimate how far down you want to traverse.

Scan all open ports without any required program

grep for minus (-) sign
Use flag "--" to stop switch parsing


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: