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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.

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Rename files in batch

add all files not under version control to repository
This should handle whitespaces well and will not get confused if your filenames have "?" in them

remove oprhan package on debian based system

cycle through a 256 colour palette
just for fun

list files recursively by size

Emulate tail using awk.
This awk codes emulates tail. For efficiency it uses a circular array, which stores only N number of records. Using awk gives the flexibility of modifying the output as needed, for example adding the record number (NR) at the output and much more.

extract email addresses from some file (or any other pattern)

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.

print code 3-up and syntax-highlighted for easy beach-time study
This is the setup I'm using for my largest project. It gives 357 lines per page (per side), which makes it fairly easy to carry around a significant amount of code on a few sheets of paper. Try it. (I stick to the 80 column convention in my coding. For wider code, you'll have to adjust this.)

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.


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