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

Rip audio from a video file.
Replace and accordingly.

List all directories only.
Undocumented syntax, but should work on every shell. It'll list all directories in the current one. Change `*/` into globbing `**/` for recursivity.

Find the package that installed a command

Rip a video for archiving, from any site
Download video files from a bunch of sites (here is a list https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html). The options say: base filename on title, ignores errors and continue partial downloads. Also, stores some metadata into a .json file plz. Paste youtube users and playlists for extra fun. Protip: git-annex loves these files

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Quickly get summary of sizes for files and folders
Use this as a quick and simple alternative to the slightly verbose "du -s --max-depth=1"

grep for minus (-) sign
Use flag "--" to stop switch parsing

perl one-liner to get the current week number
Not perl but shorter.

Ask for a password, the passwd-style
You can ask repeatedly for a non-blank password using this function: function read_password() { while [ ! -n "$USER_PASSWORD" ]; do read -s -p"Password: " USER_PASSWORD if [ ! -n "$USER_PASSWORD" ]; then echo "ERROR: You must specify a valid password, please try again" fi echo done } Also you can set a time out (in seconds) to write the password read -t 10 -s -p"Password: " USER_PASSWORD_VARIABLE if [ ! $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "Time out!" fi

Remote Serial connection redirected over network using SSH
Requires software found at: http://lpccomp.bc.ca/remserial/ Remote [A] (with physical serial port connected to device) $./remserial -d -p 23000 -s "115200 raw" /dev/ttyS0 & Local [B] (running the program that needs to connect to serial device) Create a SSH tunnel to the remote server: $ssh -N -L 23000:localhost:23000 user@hostwithphysicalserialport Use the locally tunnelled port to connect the local virtual serial port to the remote real physical port: $./remserial -d -r localhost -p 23000 -l /dev/remser1 /dev/ptmx & Example: Running minicom on machine B using serial /dev/remser1 will actually connect you to whatever device is plugged into machine A's serial port /dev/ttyS0.


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: