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output length of longest line
If your wc does not have the -L option, you can use awk.

history autocompletion with arrow keys
This will enable the possibility to navigate in the history of the command you type with the arrow keys, example "na" and the arrow will give all command starting by na in the history.You can add these lines to your .bashrc (without &&) to use that in your default terminal.

Get video information with ffmpeg
I used an flv in my example, but it'll work on any file ffmpeg supports. It says it wants an output file, but it tells what you want to know without one.

Lists all usernames in alphabetical order
Save some CPU, and some PIDs. :)

Check general system error on AIX
Check general system error on AIX

Expand shortened URLs
This relies on a public API from http://longurl.org. So, this has the weakness that if the service disappears, the function will break. However, it has the advantage that the shortened URL service will not be tracking your IP address and other metrics, but instead will track longurl.org. Thus, you can remain anonymous from the shortened URL services (although not anonymous from longurl.org). It does no sanity checking that you have provided an argument. If you do not provide one, "message" is displayed to STDOUT.

Trick find -exec option to execute alias
An alias cannot be executed as command in a find -exec line. This form will trick the command line and let you do the job.

Insert the last argument of the previous command
for example if you did a: $ ls -la /bin/ls then $ ls !$ is equivalent to doing a $ ls /bin/ls

Use tee to process a pipe with two or more processes
Tee can be used to split a pipe into multiple streams for one or more process to work it. You can add more " >()" for even more fun.

Archive all folders in a directory into their own tar.bz2 file
Remove the "echo" to actually archive. Many similar commands are found on commandlinefu but I end up needing this very specific one from time to time. To extract any of them, use the standard tar.bz2 extract command: $tar xvjf folder1.tar.bz2


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