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

ssh autocomplete based on ~/.ssh/config
I sue this in my .bashrc file This will also do auto-completion for scp and sftp

Type strait into a file from the terminal.
Takes input from the connected terminal and dumps it to the specified file. Stop writing and close file with control + D or the end of line character. Useful for copying+pasting large blobs of text over SSH to a new machine.

Display full tree information of a single process

output absolute path of the present working directory
I've seen a lot of overly complicated attempts at figuring out "where am I?" I think this is a part of the problem: type -a pwd force the use of the binary version of `pwd` instead of the built-in with "/bin/pwd -P" -P option provides an absolute path to the present working directory for the overly cautious type: $(which pwd) -P

Advanced LS Output using Find for Formatted/Sortable File Stat info
I love this function because it tells me everything I want to know about files, more than stat, more than ls. It's very useful and infinitely expandable. $ find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n' | sort -rgbS 50% 00761 drwxrw---x askapache:askapache 777:666 [06/10/10 | 06/10/10 | 06/10/10] [d] /web/cg/tmp The key is: # -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n' which believe it or not took me hundreds of tweaking before I was happy with the output. You can easily use this within a function to do whatever you want.. This simple function works recursively if you call it with -r as an argument, and sorts by file permissions. $ lsl(){ O="-maxdepth 1";sed -n '/-r/!Q1'

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; }

Copy a MySQL Database to a new Server via SSH with one command
Dumps a MySQL database over a compressed SSH tunnel and uses it as input to mysql - i think that is the fastest and best way to migrate a DB to a new server!

Make the Mac OS X Dock 2D once more (10.5 and above only)
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) introduced a new, 3D, reflective Dock. For those of us who prefer the Dock to be a little less distracting, this command is the answer. The Dock will be rendered in the same style as when pinned to the left- or right-hand side of the screen. Replace YES with NO to restore the 3D Dock.

Killing processes with your mouse in an infinite loop
Useful for quickly cleaning your Desktop. Nice joke if launched at startup.

Obtain last stock quote from google API with xmlstarlet


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: