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prettier "cal" command
Displays the same output as "cal", but with the current day highlighted (probably dependent on gnu grep, as I'm not sure other grep's support the "--color=auto" option). Tested and working on Ubuntu 11 and OSX Lion.

get the top 10 longest filenames

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"

Convert string to uppercase

Remove duplicate rows of an un-sorted file based on a single column
The command (above) will remove any duplicate rows based on the FIRST column of data in an un-sorted file. The '$1' represents a positional parameter. You can change both instances of '$1' in the command to remove duplicates based on a different column, for instance, the third: $ awk '{ if ($3 in stored_lines) x=1; else print; stored_lines[$3]=1 }' infile.txt > outfile.txt Or you can change it to '$0' to base the removal on the whole row: $ awk '{ if ($0 in stored_lines) x=1; else print; stored_lines[$0]=1 }' infile.txt > outfile.txt ** Note: I wouldn't use this on a MASSIVE file, unless you're RAM-rich ;) **

Get information about a video file

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

diff the same file in two directories.
This is useful when you're diffing two files of the same name in radically different directory trees. For example: Set $ path1='/some/long/convoluted/path/to/all/of/your/source/from/a/long/dead/machine' then $ path2='/local/version/of/same/file' then run the command. Much easier on the eyes when you're looking back across your command history, especially if you're doing the same diff over and over again.

delete duplicate lines from a file and keep the order of the other lines
i wanted to delete all duplicate lines from .bash_history and keep the order of the other lines. the command cat's the file and adds line numbers, then sorts by the second column. afterwards uniq omits repeated lines, but skips the first field (the line number). then it sorts by the line numbers and at the end cuts the numbers off.

Find files that were modified by a given command
Traces the system calls of a program. See http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/05/strace-very-powerful-troubleshooting.html for more information.


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