All commands (14,187)

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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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Selecting a random file/folder of a folder
Also looks in subfolders

Grep for word in directory (recursive)
greps for search word in directory and below (defaults to cd). -i case insensitive -n shows line number -H shows file name

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Find the package that installed a command

Get International Space Station sighting information for your city
This command outputs a table of sighting opportunities for the International Space Station. Find the URL for your city here: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

Mortality Countdown
watch the seconds of your life tick away - replace YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM:ss w/ your birthtime.

Get absolut path to your bash-script
Another way of doing it that's a bit clearer. I'm a fan of readable code.

mp3 streaming

Re-use the previous command output
The $(!!) will expand to the previous command output (by re-running the command), which becomes the parameter of the new command newcommand.

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"


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