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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.

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Zip a directory on Mac OS X and ignore .DS_Store (metadata) directory
If you want to generate a cross-platform compatible zip file and ignore the Finder's hidden metadata directory

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Shows you how many hours of avi video you have.
midentify.sh is part of mplayer, but you might have to locate it on your box.

Get max number of arguments
Get max number of arguments that can be accepted by the exec() system call.

Create a script of the last executed command
Sometimes commands are long, but useful, so it's helpful to be able to make them permanent without having to retype them. An alternative could use the history command, and a cut/sed line that works on your platform. $history -1 | cut -c 7- > foo.sh

positions the mysql slave at a specific master position
say you want to reinitialize the slave database without resetting the master positions. You stop the slave, dump the master database with --master-data=2 then execute the command on the slave and wait for it to stop at the exact position of the dump. reinit the slave db and start the slave. enjoy.

list all file extensions in a directory
If your grep doesn't have an -o option, you can use sed instead.

Monitor progress of a command
Pipe viewer is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion. Source: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/

Shuffle mp3 files in current folder and play them.
* grep -i leaves only mp3 files (case insentitive) * sort -R randomizes list (may use GNU 'shuf' instead). * the sed command will add double quotes around each filename (needed if odd characters are present)

scping files with streamlines compression (tar gzip)
it compresses the files and folders to stdout, secure copies it to the server's stdin and runs tar there to extract the input and output to whatever destination using -C. if you emit "-C /destination", it will extract it to the home folder of the user, much like `scp file user@server:`. the "v" in the tar command can be removed for no verbosity.


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