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use vim to get colorful diff output
:q to quit

Backup a file with a date-time stamp
Appends the input file with the date format YYYY-MM-DD.bak. Also runs silently if you remove the -v on the cp at the end of the function.

Change host name
With sed you can replace strings on the fly.

Retry the previous command until it exits successfully

execute a shell with netcat without -e
how to execute a shell on a server with a netcat binary which doesn't support -e option

Do not clear the screen after viewing a file with less
From the manpage: $ man less -X or --no-init Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clearing the screen. Bonus: If you want to clear the screen after viewing a file this way that had sensitive information, hit or just type clear. Since is readily available, I don't know why less bothers to automatically clear. If you're viewing the file at all, chances are you want to see the output from it after you quit.

Count all the files in the directory and child directories

Function to remove a directory from your PATH
Function to remove a specified path from your PATH environment variable.

a trash function for bash
Every rm'ed a file you needed? Of course you haven't. But I have. I got sick of it so I created a bash function. Here it is. It'll put trashed files into a $HOME/.Trash/"date" folder according to the date. I have rm aliased to it as well in my bashrc so that I still use the rm command. It'll choke if you attempt to trash a directory if that directory name is already in the Trash. This rarely happens in my case but it's easy enough to add another test and to mv the old dir if necessary. function trash(){ if [ -z "$*" ] ; then echo "Usage: trash filename" else DATE=$( date +%F ) [ -d "${HOME}/.Trash/${DATE}" ] || mkdir -p ${HOME}/.Trash/${DATE} for FILE in $@ ; do mv "${FILE}" "${HOME}/.Trash/${DATE}" echo "${FILE} trashed!" done fi }

Locking and unlocking files and mailboxes
Programs for locking and unlocking files and mailboxes.This package includes several programs to safely lock and unlock files and mailboxes from the command line. These include: lockfile-create lockfile-remove lockfile-touchlock mail-lock mail-unlock mail-touchlock These programs use liblockfile to perform the file locking and unlocking, so they are guaranteed compatible with Debian's file locking policies.


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