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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.

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Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Get your external IP address ( 10 characters long )
Shortest url to a external IP-service, 10 characters.

list files recursively by size

Instead of writing a multiline if/then/else/fi construct you can do that by one line
instead of writing: if [[ "$1" == "$2" ]]; then echo "$1 is equal $2" else echo "$1 differs from $2" fi do write: [[ "$1" == "$2" ]] && echo "$1 is equal $2" || echo "$1 differs from $2"

Colorize make, gcc, and diff output
Colorize output of make, gcc/g++ or diff, making it easier to read at a glance. They are not distributed with make, diff or gcc, but are usually available in the repositories.

Read random news on the internet
Access a random news web page on the internet. The Links browser can of course be replaced by Firefox or any modern graphical web browser.

download a list of urls

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Find the package that installed a command

Getting started with tcpdump
At some point you want to know what packets are flowing on your network. Use tcpdump for this. The man page is obtuse, to say the least, so here are some simple commands to get you started. -n means show IP numbers and don't try to translate them to names. -l means write a line as soon as it is ready. -i eth0 means trace the packets flowing through the first ethernet interface. src or dst w.x.y.z traces only packets going to or from IP address w.x.y.z. port 80 traces only packets for HTTP. proto udp traces only packets for UDP protocol. Once you are happy with each option combine them with 'and' 'or' 'not' to get the effects you want.


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