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quickly rename a file

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

Delete all git branches except master
Delete all your branches except master (useful after archiving branches)

Search and play youtube videos directly to terminal (no X needed)
pyt 'Stairway to heaven - Led Zeppelin' pyt 'brain damage - Pink Floyd' No web browser or even X needed. Just a cli and internet connection! mplayer is pauseable and can skip ahead This may break if youtube changes their search html.

Capitalize first letter of each word in a string - A ruby alternative
"-n" loops around ; "-e" executes the given quoted string ; "$_" is the current line ; "split" creates an array on white space; each item of the array is "collected" to be then "capitalized" ; the array is "joined" back into a string.

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.

ps a process keeping the header info so you know what the columns of numbers mean!
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1828 0.0 0.0 5396 476 ? Ss 2008 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd

find previously entered commands (requires configuring .inputrc)
[Click the "show sample output" link to see how to use this keystroke.]   Meta-p is one of my all time most used and most loved features of working at the command line. It's also one that surprisingly few people know about. To use it with bash (actually in any readline application), you'll need to add a couple lines to your .inputrc then have bash reread the .inputrc using the bind command:   $ echo '"\en": history-search-forward' >> ~/.inputrc   $ echo '"\ep": history-search-backward' >> ~/.inputrc   $ bind -f ~/.inputrc     I first learned about this feature in tcsh. When I switched over to bash about fifteen years ago, I had assumed I'd prefer ^R to search in reverse. Intuitively ^R seemed better since you could search for an argument instead of a command. I think that, like using a microkernel for the Hurd, it sounded so obviously right fifteen years ago, but that was only because the older way had benefits we hadn't known about.     I think many of you who use the command line as much as I do know that we can just be thinking about what results we want and our fingers will start typing the commands needed. I assume it's some sort of parallel processing going on with the linguistic part of the brain. Unfortunately, that parallelism doesn't seem to work (at least for me) with searching the history. I realize I can save myself typing using the history shortly after my fingers have already started "speaking". But, when I hit ^R in Bash, everything I've already typed gets ignored and I have to stop and think again about what I was doing. It's a small bump in the road but it can be annoying, especially for long-time command line users. Usually M-p is exactly what I need to save myself time and trouble.     If you use the command line a lot, please give Meta-p a try. You may be surprised how it frees your brain to process more smoothly in parallel. (Or maybe it won't. Post here and let me know either way. ☺)

List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }


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