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list files recursively by size

Determine space taken by files of certain type
Just how much space are those zillions of database logs taking up ? How much will you gain on a compression rate of say 80% ? This little line gives you a good start for your calculations.

Ergo browsing 'pacman' queries (Arch)
Alternative1 (grep support): pacman -Ss python | paste - - | grep --color=always -e '/python' | less -R Alternative2 (eye-candy, no grep): pacman --color=always -Ss "python" | paste - - | less -R in ~/.bashrc: pkg-grep() { pacman -Ss "$1" | paste - - | grep --color=always -e "${2:-$1}" | less -R ; } pkg-search() { pacman --color=always -Ss "python" | paste - - | less -R; }

Use Cygwin to talk to the Windows clipboard
I spent a bunch of time yesterday looking for the xsel package in Cygwin- turns out you can use the /dev/clipboard device to do the same thing.

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md

Alert on Mac when server is up
When run on a mac, this command will bring up a dialog box in the Terminal when server HOSTNAME first responds to a ping.

Show drive names next to their full serial number (and disk info)
As of this writing, this requires a fairly recent version of util-linux, but is much simpler than the previous alternatives. Basically, lsblk gives a nice, human readable interface to all the blkid stuff. (Of course, I wouldn't recommend this if you're going to be parsing the output.) This command takes all the fun out of the previous nifty pipelines, but I felt I ought to at least mention it as an alternative since it is the most practical.

Get length of current playlist in xmms2

Find the 10 users that take up the most disk space

Pick a random line from a file
This is from perldoc -q random.*line, which says: This has a significant advantage in space over reading the whole file in. You can find a proof of this method in The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, Section 3.4.2, by Donald E. Knuth. Who am I to argue with Don Knuth?


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