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Compute the numeric sum of a file
In the file data.txt there is a single column of numbers. Sed adds a "+" between lines and xargs prepares the output for bc. The "echo 0" is to avoid to have a "+" at the beginning of the line.

Escape forward slashes in a variable
For example $ path="/etc/apt/sources.list"; echo ${path//'/'/'\/'} will print $ \/etc\/apt\/sources.list

convert a,b,c to ('a','b','c') for use in SQL in-clauses

Check syntax of all Perl modules or scripts underneath the current directory
Finds all *.p[ml]-files and runs a perl -c on them, checking whether Perl thinks they are syntactically correct

View Processeses like a fu, fu
Shows a less detailed output, made only of the process tree and their pids.

find large files
simple find -> xargs sort of thing that I get a lot of use out of. Helps find huge files and gives an example of how to use xargs to deal with them. Tested on OSX snow leopard (10.6). Enjoy.

Search and play MP3 from Skreemr
This use the Screemr search engine to play mp3 songs

Unaccent an entire directory tree with files.
This command changes all filename and directories within a directory tree to unaccented ones. I had to do this to 'sanitize' some samba-exported trees. The reason it works might seem a little difficult to see at first - it first reverses-sort by pathname length, then it renames only the basename of the path. This way it'll always go in the right order to rename everything. Some notes: 1. You'll have to have the 'unaccent' command. On Ubuntu, just aptitude install unaccent. 2. In this case, the encoding of the tree was UTF-8 - but you might be using another one, just adjust the command to your encoding. 3. The program might spit a few harmless errors saying the files are the same - not to fear.

Grab just the title of a youtube video
There's another version on here that uses GET but some people don't have lwp-request, so here's an alternative. It's also a little shorter and should work with most youtube URLs since it truncates at the first &

Randomly run command
Randomly decide whether to run a command, or fail. It's useful for testing purposes. . Usage: ran PERCENTAGE COMMAND [ARGS] Note: In this version the percentage is required. . This is like @sesom42 and @snipertyler's commands but in a USABLE form. . e.g. In your complicated shell script, put "ran 99" before a crucial component. Now, it will fail 1% of the time allowing you to test the failure code-path. $ ran 99 my_complex_program arg1 arg2


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