All commands (14,187)

What's this?

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.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Check if running in an X session
If you want to display a dialog (using xdialog/kdialog/zenity) you need to make sure that you have a valid X session. Checks for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.

another tweet function
This version of tweet() doesn't require you to put quotes around the body of your tweet... it also prompts you for password. It will still barf on a '!' character.

Randomize lines in a file
This appends a random number as a first filed of all lines in SOMEFILE then sorts by the first column and finally cuts of the random numbers.

Debug how files are being accessed by a process
Instead of looking through `lsof` results, use inotifywait!

Show git branches by date - useful for showing active branches

Equivalent to ifconfig -a in HPUX
not shown ifconfig error

add all files not under version control to repository
checks which files are not under version control, fetches the names and runs them through "svn add". WARNING: doesn't work with white spaces.

Put readline into vi mode
This lets you use your favorite vi edit keys to navigate your term. To set it permanently, put "set editing-mode vi" in your ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

check open ports without netstat or lsof


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: