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list all file extensions in a directory
Works on current directory, with built-in sorting.

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

cycle through everything sox knows how to read, playing only the first three seconds
I wasted two hours reading the sox documentation and searching on the web for the format of some obscure fscking sound sample, and then finally came up with this. This plays only the first three seconds of your unknown formatted sound file using every one of sox's built-in filetypes. If you don't get an exact match, you may get close. . I could not fit every single type in and keep it under 127 characters, so you will have to replace "..." with the full list obtainable by `$ sox --help` (or try `Show sample output`) . note: /usr/bin/play should be linked to sox on most systems.

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

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

add all files not under version control to repository
With the force options the same results can be achieved

Use default value if unassigned
Will use variable value (for variable $my_dir, in this case), an assign a default value if there is none.

Tail a log-file over the network
it also works with the chrome browser. The alternative with tail and nc doesn't

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"


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