All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Format ps command output

ps command gives the possibility to display information with custom formatting with the -o options followed by the format specifier list. Show Sample Output

ps ax -o "%p %U %u %x %c %n"

servermanaged · 2009-07-14 17:21:59 9

Paste OS X clipboard contents to a file on a remote machine

Redirects the contents of your clipboard through a pipe, to a remote machine via SSH.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

pbpaste | ssh user@hostname 'cat > ~/my_new_file.txt'

mikedamage · 2009-07-14 16:32:03 3
Create a tar archive using 7z compression

Using 7z to create archives is OK, but when you use tar, you preserve all file-specific information such as ownership, perms, etc. If that's important to you, this is a better way to do it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

tar cf - /path/to/data | 7z a -si archivename.tar.7z

slashdot · 2009-07-14 14:21:30 7
Blank/erase a DVD-RW
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

dvd+rw-format -force /dev/dvd1

unixmonkey4640 · 2009-07-14 14:18:33 5
Fast grepping (avoiding UTF overhead)

greps using only ascii, skipping the overhead of matching UTF chars. Some stats: $ export LANG=C; time grep -c Quit /var/log/mysqld.log 7432 real 0m0.191s user 0m0.112s sys 0m0.079s $ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; time grep -c Quit /var/log/mysqld.log 7432 real 0m13.462s user 0m9.485s sys 0m3.977s Try strace-ing grep with and without LANG=C
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

export LANG=C; grep string longBigFile.log

ioggstream · 2009-07-14 12:48:02 9
git remove files which have been deleted

I've used technicalpickles command a lot, but this one handles whitespaces in filenames. I'm sure you want to create an alias for it :) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add/rm <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#
#	deleted:    some file
#	deleted:    some_file
#	deleted:    somefile
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
$ git ls-files -z --deleted | xargs -0 git rm
rm 'some file'
rm 'some_file'
rm 'somefile'
```
7

git ls-files -z --deleted | xargs -0 git rm

blindgaenger · 2009-07-14 08:29:38 5
find all non-html files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

find . -type f ! -name "*html"

sharfah · 2009-07-14 07:56:38 3
find external links in all html files in a directory list

Just a handy way to get all the unique links from inside all the html files inside a directory. Can be handy on scripts etc. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
http://fonts.apple.com/TTRefMan/index.html
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/ttf2pt1.htm
http://heliotrope.homestead.com/files/printsoft.html
http://linuxartist.org/fonts/
```
4

find . -name '*.html' -print0| xargs -0 -L1 cat |sed "s/[\"\<\>' \t;]/\n/g" |grep "http://" |sort -u

jamespitt · 2009-07-14 07:00:15 10
Get a range of SVN revisions from svn diff and tar gz them

Handy when you need to create a list of files to be updated when subversion is not available on the remote host. You can take this tar file, and upload and extract it where you need it. Replace M and N with the revisions specific to yours. Make sure you do this from an updated (svn up) working directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

tar cvfz changes.tar.gz --exclude-vcs `svn diff -rM:N --summarize . | grep . | awk '{print $2}' | grep -E -v '^\.$'`

jaysee · 2009-07-13 19:39:10 12
Search through files, ignoring .svn
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

grep <pattern> -R . --exclude-dir='.svn'

log0 · 2009-07-13 19:08:53 6
Find files with lines that do not match a pattern

This one would be much faster, as it's only one executed command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

fmiss() { grep -RL "$*" * }

inkel · 2009-07-13 18:30:54 5
Watch number of lines being processed on a clear screen

awk can clear the screen while displaying output. This is a handy way of seeing how many lines a tail -f has hit or see how many files find has found. On solaris, you may have to use 'nawk' and your machine needs 'tput' Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
13164
```
0

cat /dev/urandom|awk 'BEGIN{"tput cuu1" | getline CursorUp; "tput clear" | getline Clear; printf Clear}{num+=1;printf CursorUp; print num}'

axelabs · 2009-07-13 07:30:51 5
unzip all .zip files in /example/directory

Simple but useful little command to unzip all files in a directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

cd /example/directory && unzip \*.zip

Paaskehare · 2009-07-12 21:45:13 6
Sorting by rows

Save the script as: sort_file Usage: sort_file < sort_me.csv > out_file.csv This script was originally posted by Admiral Beotch in LinuxQuestions.org on the Linux-Software forum. I modified this script to make it more portable. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Sort values arranged in rows, like:
x3, x5, x1, x4, x7, x2, x6
x11, x13, x14, x8, x10, x12, x9
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
After executing the script, values will be horizontally sorted:
x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7
x8, x9, x10, x11, x12, x13, x14
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
where x1, x2, ..., xn are integers
Each row can have n integers and 
x1 < x2 < x3, ..., < x7
x8 < x9 < x10, ..., < x14
..   ..   ..           ..
After executing the script, each row will be sorted in ascending order.
```
0

infile=$1 for i in $(cat $infile) do echo $i | tr "," "\n" | sort -n | tr "\n" "," | sed "s/,$//" echo done

iframe · 2009-07-12 21:23:37 6
Using the urxvt terminal daemon

- for .xsession use - Advantages of running a urxvt daemon include faster creation time for terminal windows and a lot of saved memory. You can start new terminals as childs of urxvtd by typing urxvtc. Another advantage is, that background jobs are always owned by the urxvtd and will survive as long the daemon is running.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

urxvtd -q -o -f

wattafunnyname · 2009-07-12 14:09:06 3
find out which directories in /home have the most files currently open
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

lsof |awk ' {if ( $0 ~ /home/) print substr($0, index($0,"/home") ) }'|cut -d / -f 1-4|sort|uniq -c|sort -bgr

lucainvernizzi · 2009-07-12 02:25:57 3
Test if the given argument is a valid ip address.

This command will output 1 if the given argument is a valid ip address and 0 if it is not. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1
```
0

perl -e '$p=qr!(?:0|1\d{0,2}|2(?:[0-4]\d?|5[0-5]?|[6-9])?|[3-9]\d?)!;print((shift=~m/^$p\.$p\.$p\.$p$/)?1:0);' 123.123.123.123

speaker · 2009-07-12 00:24:29 3
Outputs files with ascii art in the intended form.

Files containing ascii art (e.g. with .nfo extension) are typically not correctly reproduced at the command line when using cat. With iconv one can easily write a wrapper to solve this: #!/bin/bash if [ -z "$@" ]; then echo "Usage: $(basename $0) file [file] ..." else iconv -f437 -tutf8 "$@"; fi exit 0
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

iconv -f437 -tutf8 asciiart.nfo

speaker · 2009-07-11 23:50:05 8
Hear the mice moving

Beeps on mouse's every move. Bear in mind that, at least on Ubuntu, /dev/input/mice can be read only by root.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

while true; do beep -l66 -f`head -c2 /dev/input/mice|hexdump -d|awk 'NR==1{print $2%10000}'`; done

5z474n · 2009-07-11 12:01:27 22
Use xdg-open to avoid hard coding browser commands

I rarely use the system menu to start applications. I use keyboard shortcuts instead. Keyboard shortcuts are convenient time savers. To configure the shortcuts I use gconf-editor or CompizConfig Settings Manager (if I have Compiz turned on). Lately I've been using Chromium as my browser. Since Chromium is under heavy development it occasionally becomes unusable and I have to switch back to Firefox. I was hard-coding the browser command in my keyboard shortcuts. This became problematic with frequent browser hopping. I now use the xdg-open command when defining my keyboard shortcuts. xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application. In the metacity keybinging_commands I have xdg-open http://gmail.com where I used to have firefox http://gmail.com. Now when switching browsers I don't have to update each keyboard binding command I just change my default browser in Ubuntu by clicking through the menu: System / Preferences / Preferred Applications / Web Browser. xdg-open is more convenient for this browser hopper.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

xdg-open http://gmail.com

PLA · 2009-07-11 11:48:32 10
kill some process (same as others) but parsing to a variable
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

tokill=`ps -fea|grep process|awk '{ printf $2" "}'`; kill -9 $tokill;

jhansen · 2009-07-11 01:40:29 7
Beep siren

Infinitely plays beeps with sinusoidally changing sound frequency. Ideal for alarm on an event.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

tempo=33; slope=10; maxfreq=888; function sinus { echo "s($1/$slope)*$maxfreq"|bc -l|tr -d '-'; }; for((i=1;;i++)); do beep -l$tempo -f`sinus $i`; done

5z474n · 2009-07-10 21:24:11 3
Move files around local filesystem with tar without wasting space using an intermediate tarball.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tar -C <source> -cf - . | tar -C <destination> -xf -

Tekhne · 2009-07-10 21:16:23 4
Use Cygwin to talk to the Windows clipboard

I spent a bunch of time yesterday looking for the xsel package in Cygwin- turns out you can use the /dev/clipboard device to do the same thing. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ ls        
$ touch testfile
$ ls
testfile
$ ls > /dev/clipboard
$ cat /dev/clipboard
testfile
```
13

cat /dev/clipboard; $(somecommand) > /dev/clipboard

sud0er · 2009-07-10 18:48:21 5
write text or append to a file

If you just want to write or append some text to a file without having to run a text editor, run this command. After running the command, start typing away. To exit, type . on a line by itself. Replacing the >> with a single > will let you overwrite your file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
> here is a line
> here is another line
> .
```
4

cat <<.>> somefilename

tomlouie · 2009-07-10 17:45:42 11
‹ First < 477 478 479 480 481 > Last ›

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

complete extraction of a debian-package

extracts the debian-package $debfile to $extractdir, including all packaging-information. to repack the package, just type: $dpkg-deb -b $extractdir

Replace duplicate files by hardlinks

This variation can handle file paths containing spaces.

grep for minus (-) sign

Use flag "--" to stop switch parsing

Find all files under a certain directory /home that have a certain suffix at the end of the file name. Show the file and rename them to remove the suffix.

combine `mkdir foo && cd foo` into a single function `mcd foo`

I find that I create a directory and then cd into that directory quite often. I found this little function on the internets somewhere and thought I'd share it. Just copy-paste it into you ~/.bash_profile and then `source ~/.bash_profile`.

Mount important virtual system directories under chroot'ed directory

The command is useful when, e.g., booting an existing system with a rescue or installation CD where you need to chroot into the hard-disk and be able to do stuff which accesses kernel info (e.g. when installing Ubuntu desktop with LVM2 you need to mount and chroot the hard disk from a shell window in order to install packages and run initramfs inside chroot). The command assumes that /mnt/xxx is where the chroot'ed environment's root file system on the hard disk is mounted.

intercept stdout/stderr of another process

similar to the previous command, but with more friendly output (tested on linux)

Generate list of words and their frequencies in a text file.

Expedient hard disk temprature and load cycle stats

This command is a great way to check to see if acpi is doing damage to your disks by agressivly parking the read arm and wearing down it's life. As you can see, mine has lost half its life. I'm sure this could be shortened though somehow. It will use smartctl to dump the stats and then grep out just the temperature and load cycles for the disk (a load cycle is when a the read arm comes out of park and wears on the drive).

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server

Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by