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Create a new file

List all symbolic links in a directory matching a string
Finds all symbolic links in the specified directory which match the specified string pattern. I used this when upgrading from an Apple-supported version of Java 6 (1.6.0_65) to an Oracle-supported version (1.7.0_55) on Mac OS X 10.8.5 to find out which executables were pointing to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands (Apple version) vs. /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/bin (Oracle version). However, it appears the current JDK installation script already takes care of modifying the links.

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"

Slightly better compressed archives
Avoids creating useless directory entries in archive, and sorts files by (roughly) extension, which is likely to group similar files together for better compression. 1%-5% improvement.

remove newlines from specific lines in a file using sed

Burn CD/DVD from an iso, eject disc when finished.
cdrecord -scanbus will tell you the (x,y,z) value of your cdr (for example, mine is 3,0,0)

check open ports (both ipv4 and ipv6)
While `lsof` will work, why not use the tool designed explicitly for this job? (If not run as root, you will only see the names of PID you own)

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"

Resolve the "all display buffers are busy, please try later" error on a Foundry

Create a tar archive using 7z compression
Using 7z to create archives is OK, but when you use tar, you preserve all file-specific information such as ownership, perms, etc. If that's important to you, this is a better way to do it.


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