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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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Change every instance of OLD to NEW in file FILE
Very quick way to change a word in a file. I use it all the time to change variable names in my PHP scripts (sed -i 's/$oldvar/$newvar/g' index.php)

Create a favicon
Create a favicon suitable for use on your web site. Note: ppmtowinicon is part of libpbm, not ImageMagick.

Rsync a directory excluding pesky .svn dirs

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"

A function to find the newest file in a directory

Use a var with more text only if it exists
See "Parameter Expansion" in the bash manpage. They refer to this as "Use Alternate Value", but we're including the var in the at alternative.

Remount an already-mounted filesystem without unmounting it
Necessary for fsck for example. The remount functionality follows the standard way how the mount command works with options from fstab. It means the mount command doesn't read fstab (or mtab) only when a device and dir are fully specified. After this call all old mount options are replaced and arbitrary stuff from fstab is ignored, except the loop= option which is internally generated and maintained by the mount command. It does not change device or mount point.

Detect illegal access to kernel space, potentially useful for Meltdown detection
Based on capsule8 agent examples, not rigorously tested

Find all files that have nasty names
Get a list of file names that may cause problems (eg being served on a webserver, typing a URL on a mobile, etc)

Processor / memory bandwidthd? in GB/s
Read 32GB zero's and throw them away. How fast is your system?


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