All commands (14,187)

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

Run a script in parrallel over ssh
Runs a local script over ssh assuming ssh keys are in place. -P argument prints results to stdout. # Uses - https://code.google.com/p/parallel-ssh/

find files containing text
-l outputs only the file names -i ignores the case -r descends into subdirectories

Google URL shortener
Use curl and sed to shorten an URL using goo.gl without any other api

Time conversion/format using the date command

Copy specific files to another machine, keeping the file hierarchy
Notes: * Adjust the find command to your own filters. * The -P flag forces to keep absolute paths in the tarball, so that you can be sure that the exact same file hierarchy will be created on the second machine.

Play all the music in a folder, on shuffle
Page up for next song

Shows space used by each directory of the root filesystem excluding mountpoints/external filesystems (and sort the output)
Excludes other mountpoints with acavagni's "mountpoint" idea, but with -exec instead of piping to an xargs subshell. Then, calling "du" only once with -exec's "+" option. The first "\! -exec" acts as a test so only those who match are passed to the second "-exec" for du.

Silently Execute a Shell Script that runs in the background and won't die on HUP/logout
This command runs your shell script in the background with no output of any kind, and it will remain running even after you logout.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Show the command line for a PID, converting nulls to spaces and a newline


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: