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

Simple top directory usage with du flips for either Linux or base Solaris
No need to type out the full OR clause if you know which OS you're on, but this is easy cut-n-paste or alias to get top ten directories by singleton. To avoid the error output from du -xSk you could always 2>/dev/null but you might miss relevant STDERR.

top 10 commands used

Does a traceroute. Lookup and display the network or AS names and AS numbers.
From the man page. lft ? display the route packets take to a network host/socket using one of several layer-4 protocols and methods; optionally show heuristic network information in transitu -A Enable lookup and display of of AS (autonomous system) numbers (e.g., [1]). This option queries one of several whois servers (see options 'C' and 'r') in order to ascertain the origin ASN of the IP address in question. By default, LFT uses the pWhoIs service whose ASN data tends to be more accurate and more timely than using the RADB as it is derived from the Internet's global routing table. -N Enable lookup and display of network or AS names (e.g., [GNTY-NETBLK-4]). This option queries Prefix WhoIs, RIPE NCC, or the RADB (as requested). In the case of Prefix WhoIs or RADB, the network name is displayed. In the case of RIPE NCC, the AS name is displayed.

Print just line 4 from a textfile
this method should be the fastest

Calculates the date 2 weeks ago from Saturday the specified format.
Good for automating reports that need to run from between two dates.

send a circular

generate iso

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"

Found how how much memory in kB $PID is occupying in Linux
The "proportional set size" is probably the closest representation of how much active memory a process is using in the Linux virtual memory stack. This number should also closely represent the %mem found in ps(1), htop(1), and other utilities.

kill process by name
Or even easier, if it's available: $ killall firefox I have no idea why you would want to rely on two unusual dependencies to do something that can be done a hundred ways from coreutils...


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: