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Customize time format of 'ls -l'
the --time-style argument to 'ls' takes several possible modifiers: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT. The +FORMAT modifier uses the same syntax as date +FORMAT. --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" strikes a happy medium between accuracy and verbosity: $ ls -lart --time-style=long-iso doesn't show time down to the nearest second, $ ls -lart --time-style=full-iso displays time to 10E-9 second resolution, but with no significant digits past the full seconds, also showing the timezone: $ -rw-r--r-- 1 bchittenden bchittenden 0 2011-02-10 12:07:55.000000000 -0500 bar

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Assign top-level JSON entries to shell variables
A recursive version might be useful too. /dev/tty is used to show which shell variables just got defined.

Join lines split with backslash at the end
Joins each line that end with backslash (common way to mark line continuation in many languages) with the following one while removing the backslash.

cd to (or operate on) a file across parallel directories
This is useful for quickly jumping around branches in a file system, or operating on a parellel file. This is tested in bash. cd to (substitute in PWD, a for b) where PWD is the bash environmental variable for the "working directory"

Sysadmin day date of any given year
Calculate the date of Sysadmin day (last Friday of July) of any given year

vi a new file with execution mode
$ vix /tmp/script.sh Open a file directly with execution permission. Put the function in your .bashrc You can also put this in your vimrc: $ command XX w | set ar | silent exe "!chmod +x %" | redraw! and open a new file like this: $ vi +XX /tmp/script.sh

Open browser from terminal to create PR after pushing something in Git in MAC

xargs for builtin bash commands
Similar to xargs -i, but works with builtin bash commands (rather than running "bash -c ..." through xargs)

Quickly create an alias for changing into the current directory


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