All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Alternative size (human readable) of files and directories (biggest last)

using mb it's still readable;) a symbol variation $ du -ms {,.[^.]}* | sort -nk1 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
186     Foto
213     .mozilla
260     .eclipse
295     .kde
301     Desktop
```
3

du -ms * .[^.]*| sort -nk1

ioggstream · 2009-07-01 13:38:13 8

kpartx can be found inside of the multipath-tools package -a adds the mappings and -d deletes them Show Sample Output

kpartx -a /dev/mapper/space-foobar

flart · 2009-07-01 09:53:33 8

List programs with open ports and connections

I prefer to use this and not the -n variety, so I get DNS-resolved hostnames. Nice when I'm trying to figure out who's got that port open.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
13

lsof -i

unixmonkey4503 · 2009-06-30 22:36:00 8
Using netcat to copy files between servers

It bypasses encryption overhead of SSH and depending on configuration can be significantly faster. It's recommended to use only in trusted networks.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

On target: "nc -l 4000 | tar xvf -" On source: "tar -cf - . | nc target_ip 4000"

tiagofischer · 2009-06-30 19:36:19 8
Alternative size (human readable) of directories (biggest first)

Taken from http://www.earthinfo.org/linux-disk-usage-sorted-by-size-and-human-readable/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

function duf { du -k $@ | sort -rn | perl -ne '($s,$f)=split(/\t/,$_,2);for(qw(K M G T)){if($s<1024){$x=($s<10?"%.1f":"%3d");printf("$x$_\t%s",$s,$f);last};$s/=1024}' }

illicium · 2009-06-30 19:20:30 15
Dump a configuration file without comments or whitespace...

A short, *easy-er* to remember command for stripping whitespace and comments from a config file, (or any file for that matter). Remember regex as: slash, space, star. pound, slash, bar. pointy-hat, dollar. (or "caret, dollar" if you must) :-P
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

grep -v "\ *#\|^$" /etc/path/to.config

geekboxjockey · 2009-06-30 18:14:46 17
c_rehash replacement

When you don't have c_rehash handy. Really simple - if you have a .pem file that doesn't really contain a x509 cert (let's say, newreq.pem), it will create a link, simply called '.0', pointing to that file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

for file in *.pem; do ln -s $file `openssl x509 -hash -noout -in $file`.0; done

darkpand · 2009-06-30 17:42:07 98
Matrix Style
This is sample output - yours may be different.
67

tr -c "[:digit:]" " " < /dev/urandom | dd cbs=$COLUMNS conv=unblock | GREP_COLOR="1;32" grep --color "[^ ]"

allinurl · 2009-06-30 17:23:49 25
Recursive when needed

avoid rm to be recursive until you complete the command: put the -rf at the end!
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

rm strangedirs -rf

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 15:10:31 15
Check if filesystem hangs

When a fs hangs and you've just one console, even # ls could be a dangerous command. Simply put a trailing "&" and play safe
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

ls /mnt/badfs &

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 14:40:22 9
Smiley Face Bash Prompt

If your last command was a dud, your bash prompt will be angry at you. Otherwise it's happy. Soon you will crave its constant approval and your linux skills will improve simply to avoid low self-esteem. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
^_^ # true
^_^ # false
-_- #
```
17

PS1="\`if [ \$? = 0 ]; then echo \e[33\;40m\\\^\\\_\\\^\e[0m; else echo \e[36\;40m\\\-\e[0m\\\_\e[36\;40m\\\-\e[0m; fi\` \u \w:\h)"

digitalsushi · 2009-06-30 14:29:55 376
quickly backup or copy a file with bash

less symbols, tab completion. including # export SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX="_`date +%F`" in your .bashrc provides you to easily timestamp your files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

cp -bfS.bak filename filename

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 14:17:28 33
stop windows update

Windows only: stops windows update and the nagging restart window. You need your admin password for this one.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

runas /user:administrator net stop wuauserv

oernii2 · 2009-06-30 09:29:03 18
reload bash_profile

when editing .bash_profile (or .bashrc), run this to use the new version without having to exit and open a new terminal
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

source ~/.bash_profile

unixmonkey743 · 2009-06-29 19:26:43 16
Trim linebreaks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

cat myfile.txt | tr -d '\n'

Cowboy · 2009-06-29 12:49:08 6
SVN Status log to CSV

Note you have also the --xml option ;) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1 | author | 2009-09-09 12:12:12 +200 | Initial import
2 | author | 2009-09-09 12:15:16 +200 | ADDED: great feature
```
3

svn log | tr -d '\n' | sed -r 's/-{2,}/\n/g' | sed -r 's/ $[^$]+\)//g' | sed -r 's/^r//' | sed -r "s/[0-9]+ lines?//g" | sort -g

Cowboy · 2009-06-29 12:48:30 6
Define a quick calculator function

defines a handy function for quick calculations from cli. once defined: ? 10*2+3 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
23?
```
58

? () { echo "$*" | bc -l; }

fizz · 2009-06-28 20:15:30 27
Uniformly correct filenames in a directory

Useful if non-ascii characters in filenames have been improperly encoded. Replace "PROBLEM" with the incorrect characters (e.g. 'é'), and "FIX" with the correct ones (e.g. '?').
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

for i in *;do mv "$i" "$(echo $i | sed s/PROBLEM/FIX/g)";done

AlecSchueler · 2009-06-28 01:50:25 18
replace spaces in filenames with underscores

This command will replace all the spaces in all the filenames of the current directory with underscores. There are other commands that do this here, but this one is the easiest and shortest.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
68

rename 'y/ /_/' *

signal9 · 2009-06-27 22:20:47 84

Twitter update from terminal (pok3's snipts ?)

Found it on snipt, pok3, is it yours? I put my user = m33600, the password and the status was my robot message: Settima robot message: ALARM ZONE 3 (sent via command line). Now bots may have their identity on twitter... Show Sample Output

curl -u YourUsername:YourPassword -d status="Your status message go here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

m33600 · 2009-06-27 21:47:48 12

Extract the emoticons regex from a running skype process

Skype has an internal regex which depicts the emoticons it supports. However you cannot simply search the binary file for it. This small 181 character line will do just that, provided skype is running. And of course, only works in linux. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
(...) |$banghead$|$bear$|$beer$|$blush$|$bow$|$bricklayers$|$brokenheart$|$bug$|$bye$|$cake$|$call$|$cash$|$chuckle$| (...)
```
1

S=`pidof skype`;grep heap /proc/$S/maps|cut -f1 -d' '|awk -F- '{print "0x" $1 " 0x" $2}'|xargs echo "du me t ">l;gdb -batch -p $S -x l>/dev/null 2>&1;strings t|grep \(smirk|head -n1

alvieboy · 2009-06-26 20:03:17 6
Print line immediately before a matching regex.

Use this if you don't have access to GNU grep's -B option.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

awk '/regex/{print x};{x=$0}'

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:29:54 10
VIM: Replace a string with an incrementing number between marks 'a and 'b (eg, convert string ZZZZ to 1, 2, 3, ...)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
11

:let i=0 | 'a,'bg/ZZZZ/s/ZZZZ/\=i/ | let i=i+1

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:23:29 6
Move files around local filesystem with tar without wasting space using an intermediate tarball.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
7

( cd SOURCEDIR && tar cf - . ) | (cd DESTDIR && tar xvpf - )

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:13:51 14

Untar file with absolute pathname to relative location

Don't have GNU tar installed that supports the redirect option (-C)? Use this. Show Sample Output

pax -r -s ',^/,,' -f file.tar

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:10:57 7

‹ First < 481 482 483 484 485 > 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

Create directory named after current date

Not a discovery but a useful one nontheless. In the above example date format is 'yyyymmdd'. For other possible formats see 'man date'. This command can be also very convenient when aliased to some meaningful name: $ alias mkdd='mkdir $(date +%Y%m%d)'

rapidshare download script in 200 characters

Find files of two different extensions and copy them to a directory

Wait for file to stop changing

Here's a way to wait for a file (a download, a logfile, etc) to stop changing, then do something. As written it will just return to the prompt, but you could add a "; echo DONE" or whatever at the end. This just compares the full output of "ls" every 10 seconds, and keeps going as long as that output has changed since the last interval. If the file is being appended to, the size will change, and if it's being modified without growing, the timestamp from the "--full-time" option will have changed. The output of just "ls -l" isn't sufficient since by default it doesn't show seconds, just minutes. Waiting for a file to stop changing is not a very elegant or reliable way to measure that some process is finished - if you know the process ID there are much better ways. This method will also give a false positive if the changes to the target file are delayed longer than the sleep interval for any reason (network timeouts, etc). But sometimes the process that is writing the file doesn't exit, rather it continues on doing something else, so this approach can be useful if you understand its limitations.

Get all IPs via ifconfig

and, a lot uglier, with sed: $ ifconfig | sed -n '/inet addr:/s/[^:]\+:$\S\+$.*/\1/p' Edit: Wanted to be shorter than the perl version. Still think that the perl version is the best..

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)

swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Sort files in folders alphabetically

Creates one letter folders in the current directory and moves files with corresponding initial in the folder.

List files with quotes around each filename

Compare two CSV files, discarding any repeated lines

The value for the sort command's -k argument is the column in the CSV file to sort on. In this example, it sorts on the second column. You must use some form of the sort command in order for uniq to work properly.

Screenshot Directly To Clipboard

This will take a screenshot of a selected area and save it as foo.png as well as sending it straight to the clipboard for pasting into GIMP, Anki, Zim, etc.

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