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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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pinky - user info
Gives information about user's home directory and real name and shell user is having.

Search commandlinefu.com from the command line using the API
Usage: cmdfu hello world

vi keybindings with info
Info has some of the worst keybindings I've ever seen. Being a vim user, I attribute that to emacs influence. Use the --vi-keys option to use some of the vi keybindings, although this won't change all the keybindings. Use the "infokey" program to have more control over info keybindings.

Get ElasticSearch configuration and version details
Replace localhost:9200 with your server location and port. This is the ElasticSearch's default setup for local instances.

Single words from Amazon Kindle 3 notes
You can use any dictionary you want, in any language. This command will output all single-word annotations that you have underlined in your Kindle device (provided the file) given a list of language-specific words. If you want to learn vocabulary, this command is ideal.

Print stack trace of a core file without needing to enter gdb interactively
The pstack command prints a stack trace of running processes without needing to attach a debugger, but what about core files? The answer, of course, is to use this command. Usage: gdbbt program corefile

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

find largest file in /var
find largest file in /var

Keep track of diff progress
You're running a program that reads LOTS of files and takes a long time. But it doesn't tell you about its progress. First, run a command in the background, e.g. $ find /usr/share/doc -type f -exec cat {} + > output_file.txt Then run the watch command. "watch -d" highlights the changes as they happen In bash: $! is the process id (pid) of the last command run in the background. You can change this to $(pidof my_command) to watch something in particular.

Use file(1) to view device information
file(1) can print details about certain devices in the /dev/ directory (block devices in this example). This helped me to know at a glance the location and revision of my bootloader, UUIDs, filesystem status, which partitions were primaries / logicals, etc.. without running several commands. See also: $ file -s /dev/dm-* $ file -s /dev/cciss/* etc..


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