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

Isolate file name from full path/find output
Quick method of isolating filenames from a full path using expansion. Much quicker than using "basename"

list folders containing less than 2 MB of data
This command will search all subfolders of the current directory and list the names of the folders which contain less than 2 MB of data. I use it to clean up my mp3 archive and to delete the found folders pipe the output to a textfile & run: $ while read -r line; do rm -Rv "$line"; done < textfile

Execute a sudo command remotely, without displaying the password
The ssh command alone will execute the sudo command remotely, but the password will be visible in the terminal as you type it. The two stty commands disable the terminal from echoing the password back to you, which makes the remote sudo act as it does locally.

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

Google Translate
$translate works from command line

Backup all MySQL Databases to individual files

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

Fetch all GPG keys that are currently missing in your keyring
For instance, if people have signed your key, this will fetch the signers' keys.

Convert Youtube videos to MP3
Make your own MP3s from Youtube videos.

View all images
So you are in directory with loads of pictures laying around and you need to quickly scan through them all


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: