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Backup a file with a date-time stamp
1. you don't need to prepend the year with 20 - just use Y instead of y 2. you may want to make your function a bit more secure: buf () { cp ${1?filename not specified}{,$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)}; }

Factory reset your android device via commandline.

save date and time for each command in history
for the change stay in your history file , export command by writing it into your .bashrc

Install your ssh key file on a remote system

Script executes itself on another host with one ssh command
Now put more interesting stuff on the script in replacement of hostname, even entire functions, etc, and stuff. hosta> cat myScript.sh #!/bin/sh [ $1 == "client" ] && hostname || cat $0 | ssh $1 /bin/sh -s client hosta> myScript.sh hostb hostb hosta>

Recursive find and replace file extension / suffix (mass rename files)
Find recursively all files in ~/Notes with the extension '.md' and pipe that via xargs to rename command, which will replace every '.md' to '.txt' in this example (existing files will not be overwritten).

Move all comments the top of the file in vim
Python comments begin with a #. Modify to suit other languages. Other uses: Instead of m0 use m$ for end of file or d for deleting all comments.

Show a prettified list of nearby wireless APs

Display or use a random file from current directory via a small bash one-liner
An other way to run it ( playing a random file ending with avi, flv or mpeg ) from a specified dir and a specified type of extension : making MOVIE array with a glob : $ MOVIE=( /PATH/TO/MY/FAVORITE/MOVIES/*.{avi,flv,mpeg} ) playing the random file from a random key from the array $ mplayer ${MOVIE[ RANDOM % ( ${#i[@]} + 1 ) ]]} I use only globs and a bash array. I use GNU bash, version 3.2.48

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" }


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