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Print text string vertically, one character per line.
Define a function $ vert () { echo $1 | grep -o '.'; } Use it to print some column headers $ paste

Find the package that installed a command

Most used command

Debian: Mark all dependent packages as manualy installed.
Debian: Mark all dependent packages as manually installed. So they are not automatically removed if you remove some meta package - like gnome-desktop-environment for example.

Create patch file for two directories

Remove specific entries from iptables
Then you can remove the specific entry: iptables -D INPUT 10 Just make sure these are set: IPTABLES_SAVE_ON_STOP="yes" IPTABLES_SAVE_ON_RESTART="yes" Else your changes won't stick when you restart iptables.

count of down available ips
avoid wc overload ;)

easily find megabyte eating files or directories
sorts the files by integer megabytes, which should be enough to (interactively) find the space wasters. Now you can $ dush for the above output, $ dush -n 3 for only the 3 biggest files and so on. It's always a good idea to have this line in your .profile or .bashrc

Print IP of any interface. Useful for scripts.

Find out what the day ends in
Several people have submitted commands to do this, but I think this is the simplest solution. It also happens to be the most portable one: It should work with any sh or csh derived shell under any UNIX-like OS. Oh by the way, with my German locale ($LC_TIME set appropriately) it prints "g" most of the time, and sometimes (on Wednesdays) it prints "h". It never prints "y".


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