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

Capture video of a linux desktop
This is identical to the original command, but allows you to specify an offset if you have multiple monitors. In this case you'll record a 1366x768 window that's offset by 1366 pixels in the x axis and 0 pixels in the y axis. Note also that the -sameq option has been replaced by -qscale - at least in ffmpeg version 1.2.1 on Fedora 19.

A function to find the newest file in a directory
Works recusivley in the specified dir or '.' if none given. Repeatedly calls 'find' to find a newer file, when no newer files exist you have the newest. In this case 'newest' means most recently modified. To find the most recently created change -newer to -cnewer.

Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions (no echo)
Write a file you edited in Vim but that you do not have the permissions to write to (unless you use sudo.) Same as #1204 but without the echo to stdout that I find annoying.

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

display typedefs, structs, unions and functions provided by a header file
will display typedefs, structs, unions and functions declared in 'stdio.h'(checkout _IO_FILE structure). It will be helpful if we want to know what a particular header file will offer to us. Command 'cpp' is GNU's C Preprocessor.

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.

List open sockets protocol/address/port/state/PID/program name

Get length of current playlist in xmms2

Delete all git branches except master
Delete all your branches except master (useful after archiving branches)

Lurk what's going on on remote console


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: