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

List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location
Simple and easy to remember. -h is human, -d1 = depth 1. disk usage, human, depth 1

Detect Language of a string
Usage: $ detectlanguage Example: $ detectlanguage hola

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Rescan partitions on a SCSI device
Used this after cloning a disk with dd to make the newly written partitions show up in /dev/

Determine command type (alias, keyword, function, builtin, or file)
Prints a string indicating whether a command is an alias, keyword, function, builtin, or file. I have used this in my BASH scripts to allow an external parameter to define which function to run, and ensure that it is a valid function that can indeed be run.

create a .avi with many .jpg

Print IP of any interface. Useful for scripts.

Use Dell Service Tag $1 to Find Machine Model [Model Name and Model Number]
255 Max Characters CommandLineFu for $dellurl='http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/my_systems_info/en/details?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=hied&ServiceTag='

Create a bash script from last n commands
Uses history to get the last n+1 commands (since this command will appear as the most recent), then strips out the line number and this command using sed, and appends the commands to a file.

Set random background image in gnome
Changes your desktop background image in gnome. Update the directory to wherever you keep your wallpapers. I like to create a sub-directory in my Wallpaper folder called "cycle" that I use to define the wallpapers I wish to loop in cron. ex: $ gconftool-2 -t str -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "$(find ~/Wallpapers/cycle -type f | shuf -n1)"


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: