All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Replaces every ocurrences of 'old' for 'new' in all files specified

Replaces every ocurrence of 'old' for 'new' in all files specified. After the 'i' char you can put a '~' or whatever to create a backup file for each replaced with the name equal to the original plus character.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

perl -i -pe "s/old/new/g" *

pandres · 2009-02-05 12:07:27 66
cycle through a 256 colour palette

just for fun
This is sample output - yours may be different.
14

yes "$(seq 232 255;seq 254 -1 233)" | while read i; do printf "\x1b[48;5;${i}m\n"; sleep .01; done

pixelbeat · 2009-02-05 12:01:37 25
Serve current directory tree at http://$HOSTNAME:8000/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
846

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

pixelbeat · 2009-02-05 11:57:43 146
Shows the largest files in your archives
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

tar -tvjf backup.tar.bz2 | sort -nrk 3 | head

Sekenre · 2009-02-05 11:57:18 89
Remove invalid host keys from ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Useful if you have to tunnel ssh through a local port and it complains of the host key being different. Much easier than manually editing the file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

ssh-keygen -R \[localhost\]:8022

Sekenre · 2009-02-05 11:48:09 113
find all processes named hunger and force kill, minus the grep itself and output to a file called fu.bar
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

ps -auwx|egrep hunger|grep -v grep| awk '{print "kill -9",$1}' > ~/fu.bar

lendellray · 2009-02-05 11:43:38 30
rgrep: recursive grep without .svn

Only excludes .svn from filenames. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
[nf@dev ~/css]$ rgrep sprites
./template.php:require "css_sprites.php";
./template.php: $abs_path.'/sprites/',
./template.php: 'sprites.css',
./template.php:include 'sprites.css';
```
2

alias rgrep="find . $ ! -name .svn -o -prune $ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep"

nf · 2009-02-05 11:23:23 34
Get the 10 biggest files/folders for the current direcotry
This is sample output - yours may be different.
51

du -s * | sort -n | tail

bambambazooka · 2009-02-05 11:18:43 33
Start urxvt and do whatever is needed to open the screen session named "main"

Open a terminal (urxvt in this case) to connect to a screen session (named "main") and create the screen session if necessary.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

screen -ls | grep main && urxvt -name screen -e screen -x main || urxvt -name screen -e screen -R -S main

trey · 2009-02-05 10:51:31 191
SSH to a machine's internet address if it is not present on your local network

Ping machine once, waiting 1 second for response until failing. Upon fail, ssh globally, otherwise ssh locally.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

ping localip -c 1 -W 1 &> /dev/null && ssh localip || ssh globalip

trey · 2009-02-05 10:40:26 524
search the manual page names and descriptions
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

apropos somekeyword

chrisdrew · 2009-02-05 10:29:15 57
locate bin, src, and man file for a command
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

whereis somecommand

chrisdrew · 2009-02-05 10:29:10 746
locate a command

Returns the pathnames of the files which would be executed in the current environment had its arguments been given as a command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

which somecommand

chrisdrew · 2009-02-05 10:29:04 41
Search through files, ignoring .svn

Variant of find grep that ignores files with .svn in the name. Useful for searching through a local repository of source code.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

find . -type f -print0 | grep -vzZ '.svn' | xargs -0 grep --color -nEHi "SEARCHTERM"

troelskn · 2009-02-05 10:27:15 39
cd canonical (resolve any symlinks)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

alias cdc='cd `pwd -P`'

adavies42 · 2009-02-05 10:15:11 36
ring the bell
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

alias beep='echo -en "\007"'

adavies42 · 2009-02-05 10:14:24 33
get a directory from one machine to another using tar and ssh
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

ssh somemachine "cd some dir; tar zcpf - somedirname" |tar zxpf -

mischamolhoek · 2009-02-05 09:10:56 30
A nice command for summarising repeated information
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

alias counts=sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

porges · 2009-02-05 08:24:02 519
Rip audio from a video file.

Replace and accordingly.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
68

mplayer -ao pcm -vo null -vc dummy -dumpaudio -dumpfile <output-file> <input-file>

sykora · 2009-02-05 08:17:04 40
diff two unsorted files without creating temporary files

bash/ksh subshell redirection (as file descriptors) used as input to diff
This is sample output - yours may be different.
100

diff <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

systemj · 2009-02-04 22:20:13 502
Run a command only when load average is below a certain threshold

Good for one off jobs that you want to run at a quiet time. The default threshold is a load average of 0.8 but this can be set using atrun. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
job 6 at 2009-02-04 19:03
```
45

echo "rm -rf /unwanted-but-large/folder" | batch

root · 2009-02-04 19:07:52 45
Get the full path to a file

Useful in scripts when the file is passed in as an argument. Eg. filepath=$(realpath $1) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
/full/path/to/examplefile.txt
```
7

realpath examplefile.txt

root · 2009-02-04 15:41:44 46
Compare a remote file with a local file

Useful for checking if there are differences between local and remote files.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
176

ssh user@host cat /path/to/remotefile | diff /path/to/localfile -

root · 2009-02-04 11:33:19 79

Search gzipped files

This decompresses the file and sends the output to STDOUT so it can be grepped. A good one to put in loops for searching directories of gzipped files, such as man pages. Show Sample Output

-7

zcat /usr/share/man/man1/grep.1.gz | grep "color"

root · 2009-02-04 09:38:45 54

Display all readline binding that use CTRL

Useful for getting to know the available keyboard shortcuts. Show Sample Output

bind -p | grep -F "\C"

root · 2009-02-03 16:22:14 57

‹ First < 564 565 566 567 568 >

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

track flights from the command line

Usage: flight_status airline_code flight_number (optional)_offset_of_departure_date_from_today So for instance, to track a flight which departed yesterday, the optional 3rd parameter should have a value of -1. eg. flight_status ua 3655 -1 output --------- Status: Arrived Departure: San Francisco, CA (SFO) Scheduled: 6:30 AM, Jan 3 Takeoff: 7:18 AM, Jan 3 Term-Gate: Term 1 - 32A Arrival: Newark, NJ (EWR) Scheduled: 2:55 PM, Jan 3 At Gate: 3:42 PM, Jan 3 Term-Gate: Term C - C131 Note: html2text needs to be installed for this command. only tested on ubuntu 9.10

Get the IP address of a machine. Just the IP, no junk.

Concatenate video files to YouTube ready output

Takes two input video files and an external audio track and encodes them together to an MPEG-4 DivX output video file with the correct size ready for uploading.

Copy modification timestamp from one file to another.

Check if a string is into a variable

Returns true (0) if the string is into $var, or false (1) if not.

gawk gets fixed width field

Colored diff ( via vim ) on 2 remotes files on your local computer.

You can use $ vim scp://root@example.com//file too in a simple case.

Random Number Between 1 And 256

It takes a byte from /dev/random whose source is the kernel entropy pool (better source than other solutions).

Go get those photos from a Picasa album

Share a screen session

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by