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Optimal way of deleting huge numbers of files

Using xargs is better than: find /path/to/dir -type f -exec rm \-f {} \; as the -exec switch uses a separate process for each remove. xargs splits the streamed files into more managable subsets so less processes are required.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

root · 2009-01-26 11:30:47 63
Display PHP files that directly instantiate a given class

This greps all PHP files for a given classname and displays both the file and the usage. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tao/tests/filter/TestUrl.php:        $this->objFilter = new filter_Url();
tao/classes/local/view/Photos.php:        $objFilter  = new filter_Url();
```
1

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep \-H "new filter_" {} \;

root · 2009-01-26 10:43:09 75
Run the last command as root

Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1219

sudo !!

root · 2009-01-26 10:26:48 263
Creates a customized search command

Creates a command alias ('cr' in the above example) that searches the contents of files matching a set of file extensions (C & C++ source-code in the above example) recursively within the current directory. Search configured to be in colour, ignore-case, show line numbers and show 4 lines of context. Put in shell initialisation file of your choice. Trivially easy to use, e.g: cr sha1_init Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./openssl/signatures.c-600-xmlSecOpenSSLDsaSha1EvpInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx)
./openssl/signatures.c-601-{
./openssl/signatures.c:602:    return SHA1_Init(ctx->md_data);
./openssl/signatures.c-603-}
./openssl/signatures.c-604-
--
./openssl/signatures.c-706-    NULL,
./openssl/signatures.c-707-#else /* XMLSEC_OPENSSL_096 */
./openssl/signatures.c:708:    SHA1_Init,
./openssl/signatures.c-709-    SHA1_Update,
./openssl/signatures.c-710-    SHA1_Final,
```
0

alias cr='find . 2>/dev/null -regex '\''.*\.$c\|cpp\|pc\|h\|hpp\|cc$$'\'' | xargs grep --color=always -ni -C2'

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 08:54:25 56
Outputs a sorted list of disk usage to a text file

Recursively searches current directory and outputs sorted list of each directory's disk usage to a text file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
712     .
328     ./test
176     ./lib
144     ./doc
100     ./test/data
96      ./lib/rake
64      ./doc/release_notes
```
6

du | sort -gr > file_sizes

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 01:12:54 62
Watch how fast the files in a drive are being deleted

This can be useful when a large remove operation is taking place.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

watch "df | grep /path/to/drive"

root · 2009-01-25 21:16:41 674
Execute a command at a given time

This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
266

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

root · 2009-01-25 21:07:42 86
Analyse an Apache access log for the most common IP addresses

This uses awk to grab the IP address from each request and then sorts and summarises the top 10.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

tail -10000 access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

root · 2009-01-25 21:01:52 47
Add SVN keywords property to all PHP and Javascript files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . $ -name "*.php" -o -name "*.js" $ -exec svn propset svn:keywords Id {} \;

root · 2009-01-24 00:54:35 63
Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

find . -type f | wc -l

root · 2009-01-23 17:19:32 74

Display the top ten running processes - sorted by memory usage

ps returns all running processes which are then sorted by the 4th field in numerical order and the top 10 are sent to STDOUT. Show Sample Output

106

ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail

root · 2009-01-23 17:12:33 295

Checks all MySQL tables

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisamchk.html for further details. You can also repair all tables by running: myisamchk -r *.MYI
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

myisamchk /path/to/mysql/files/*.MYI

root · 2009-01-22 10:20:00 133
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Cleanly manage tempfiles in scripts

Cleanly create tempfiles using mktemp and remove them using traps instead of removing them in the end of the script. This way, you make sure the tempfiles are removed properly even if the script is killed or interrupted. For a user script in KDE4, you can set TMPROOT using : $ TMPROOT=$(kde4-config --path tmp)

HTTP redirect

any HTTP requests to the machine on the specified port will be redirected to http://www.whatevs.com... quick, dirty, works fine for sites w/

Email yourself a short note

I created this so I could send myself an email alert when a long-running job was finished, e.g., $ my_long_job.exe ; quickemail my_long_job.exe has finished

Multiple variable assignments from command output in BASH

It's quite easy to capture the output of a command and assign it in a shell's variable: $ day=$(date +%d) $ month=$(date +%m) But, what if we want to perform the same task with just one program invocation? Here comes the power of eval! date(1) outputs a string like "day=29; month=07; year=11" (notice the semicolons I added on purpose at date's custom output) which is a legal shell line. This like is then parsed and executed by the shell once again with the help of eval. Just setting 3 variables! Inspired by LinuxJournal's column "Dave Taylor's Work the Shell".

Open Remote Desktop (RDP) from command line having a custom screen size

This example uses xfreerdp, which builds upon the development of rdesktop. This example usage will also send you the remote machine's sound.

diff will usually only take one file from STDIN. This is a method to take the result of two streams and compare with diff. The example I use to compare two iTunes libraries but it is generally applicable.

diff is designed to compare two files. You can also compare directories. In this form, bash uses 'process substitution' in place of a file as an input to diff. Each input to diff can be filtered as you choose. I use find and egrep to select the files to compare.

Google URL shortener

use curl and sed to shorten an url via goo.gl

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Multi-line grep

Using perl you can search for patterns spanning several lines, a thing that grep can't do. Append the list of files to above command or pipe a file through it, just as with regular grep. If you add the 's' modifier to the regex, the dot '.' also matches line endings, useful if you don't known how many lines you need are between parts of your pattern. Change '*' to '*?' to make it greedy, that is match only as few characters as possible. See also http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/1764/display-a-block-of-text-with-awk to do a similar thing with awk. Edit: The undef has to be put in a begin-block, or a match in the first line would not be found.

grep binary (hexadecimal) patterns

-P activates the Perl regular expression mode.

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