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list the top 15 folders by decreasing size in MB
list the top 15 folders by decreasing size in MB

Clone or rescue a block device
If you use the logfile feature of ddrescue, the data is rescued very efficiently (only the needed blocks are read). Also you can interrupt the rescue at any time and resume it later at the same point. http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

List bash functions defined in .bash_profile or .bashrc
If you issue the "set" command, you'll see a list of variables and functions. This command displays just those functions' names.

Colorize matching string without skipping others
this is useful to highlight only some code without losing other lines (eg. software, logs, scripts)

Display unique values of a column
the column number is '6'

Reload all sysctl variables without reboot
Use `sysctl -p` without argument will only load /etc/sysctl.conf, but user configs always put in /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf, `sysctl --system` will load all the config files

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Get full directory path of a script regardless of where it is run from
Also resolves symlinks, showing the full path of the link target

from within vi, pipe a chunk of lines to a command line and replace the chunk with the result
The vi key sequence !}command will send the file contents from the cursor to the next blank line as STDOUT to the command specified and replace that sequence of file lines with the output of the command. For example: sorting a block of data - !}sort The sequence !{command will do the same but "upwards" (from the current position towards the start of the file.

Join lines
awk version of 7210. Slightly longer, but expanding it to catch blank lines is easier: $ awk 'BEGIN{RS="\0"}{gsub(/\n+/,"");print}' file.txt


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