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Sum file sizes

Print current running shell, PID
works as well as echo $0, but also prints process id, which pts you're using. echo $SHELL doesn't always get updated when changing shells, so this is a better solution than that. Just one more variation on a theme.

How to pull out lines between two patterns
This command will display all lines between 2 patterns: word-a and word-b useful for grepping command outputs from file

List every file that has ever existed in a git repository
What was the name of that module we wrote and deleted about 3 months ago? windowing-something? $ git log --all --pretty=format:" " --name-only | sort -u | grep -i window

Monitor a file's size
use "watch" instead of while-loops in these simple cases

Look up the definition of a word
A bash function might also be useful: $ dict() { curl dict://dict.org/d:$1; } Or if you want less verbose output: $ dict() { curl -s dict://dict.org/d:$1 | perl -ne 's/\r//; last if /^\.$/; print if /^151/../^250/'; }

Replace all tabs with spaces in an application
Note that this assumes the application is an SVN checkout and so we have to throw away all the .svn files before making the substitution.

Lookup errno defintions
Calls the POSIX strerror() function to look up the meaning of integer ERRNOs set by some functions.

Simple example of the trap command

find out how many days since given date
Exactly the same number of characters, exactly the same results, but with bc


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