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Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server
Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

show the date every rpm was installed
the newest rpms are at the top; individual packages can also be queried this way: rpm --last -q package

check the status of 'dd' in progress (OS X)
Sends SIGINFO to the process. This is a BSD feature OS X inherited. You must have the terminal window executing dd selected when entering CTRL + T for this to work.

gzip over ssh
I've kept the gzip compression at a low level, but depending on the cpu power available on the source machine you may want to increase it. However, SQL compresses really well, and I found even with -1 I was able to transfer 40 MiB/s over a 100 mbps wire, which was good enough for me.

Define a quick calculator function
POSIX compliant arithmetic evaluation. = 10*2+3

Delete backward from cursor, useful when you enter the wrong password

Do quick arithmetic on numbers from STDIN with any formatting using a perl one liner.
Good for summing the numbers embedded in text - a food journal entry for example with calories listed per food where you want the total calories. Use this to monitor and keep a total on anything that ouputs numbers.

Check if a domain is available and get the answer in just one line
Returns nothing if the domain exists and 'No match for domain.com' otherwise.

Check tcp-wrapping support
This function returns TRUE if the application supports tcp-wrapping or FALSE if not by reading the shared libraries used by this application.


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