Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.


If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

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:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

All commands

All commands from sorted by
Terminal - All commands - 10,560 results
mkdir replaced;for i in *; do cat "$i"| sed 's/foo/bar/' > "replaced/$i"; done
2011-08-30 08:28:26
User: rubo77
Functions: cat mkdir sed
-5

if you want to replace "foo" with "bar" in all files in a folder, and put the resulting files into a new subfolder

find . -type f | xargs grep -l "string"
2011-08-30 13:22:42
User: Neo23x0
Functions: find grep xargs
-5

Finds a string in files recursively below the current directory on systems without the "egrep" and its "-r" functionality.

cat file.txt | grep -v /$ > newfile.txt
<ctrl+r> keywords #more <ctrl+r> to shift
echo "A great password" | md5sum
2009-04-24 14:32:56
User: ubersoldat
Functions: echo
-5

You can also use sha1sum and variants for longer passwords

''=~('(?{'.('_/@.*@'^'/])@^`').'"'.('"/_/@]/--!.:@</:[@(:/:^'^'[@*]`>@@@@@^`[@_(`@_]_|').',$/})')
taskkill /F /FI "USERNAME eq Cicciopalla"
2012-02-05 12:00:52
User: 0disse0
-5

The taskkill command has the option of the curve, for a complete list just type: taskkill /? As we know, but to give a practical example, suppose you want to act only on the user's processes Cicciopalla use this command

bm () { ... see description }
chmod 755 $(find public_html -type d)
uname -a
ps aux|grep -i [p]rocessname|awk '{ print $2 }'|xargs kill
x=`<cmd1>`; <cmd2> arg0, ... $x, argN, ...
dd bs=1 count=32 if=/dev/random 2> /dev/null | md5 | grep -o '\w*'
!?192
2009-02-26 12:52:45
User: alexfoo
-5

Might match "ping 192.168.0.1" and then run it.

source ~/.bash_profile
2009-06-29 19:26:43
-5

when editing .bash_profile (or .bashrc), run this to use the new version without having to exit and open a new terminal

ssh -X -l user 192.168.1.25
2013-04-30 13:48:28
User: xmuda
Functions: ssh
-5

One time you logged in, you can prove these method just writing "firefox".

for i in $(find . -name *replaceme*);do mv "$i" "${i//replaceme/withme}"; done
2010-08-19 03:22:15
User: lefnire
Functions: find mv
Tags: bash
-5

rename is a great command, but can't get it to work on mac.

sudo alsa force-reload
2009-02-16 03:30:13
User: oreo
Functions: sudo
-5

if you lose your sound, this will restart alsa and you will get your sound back

oumou sangare
crontab -e
lynx -useragent=Opera -dump 'http://www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=4&__a=1' |gawk -F'\"t\":\"' -v RS='\",' 'RT{print $NF}' |grep -v '\"n\":\"' |cut -d, -f2
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -not -name . -exec du -sh {} +
2009-12-11 14:37:26
User: sorpigal
Functions: du find
-5

Parsing the output of ls is never a good idea for any reason. Using find this way:

- works with files that have spaces in their names.

- actually lists "sub folders" and not of all files and folders.

- does not break if there are a huge number of files in the current directory.

ntop
_ff(){ cd /mnt;echo /mnt/*/* |sed 's/ \/mnt\//\&/g' |sed '/'"$1"'/!d'; cd -;}
2011-12-30 23:25:31
User: argv
Functions: cd echo sed
-5

_ff(){

cd /mnt;

echo /mnt/*/* |sed '

s/ \/mnt\//\&/g;

'|sed '/'"$1"'/!d';

cd -;

}

ff(){

case $# in

0)

echo "usage: ff glob [sed-cmds] [--|var-name]"

;;

1)

_ff $1 |sed =

;;

[2-9])

case $2 in

--) _ff $1 |less -SN

;;

*) _ff $1 |sed -n ''"$2"''|tr '\n' '\040' |sed 's/.*/export '"$3"'=\"&/;s/=\" /=\"/;s/ $/\"/' > $HOME/.ff;

case $# in

3)

. $HOME/.ff

;;

esac;

sed '

s/export .*=\"/\$'"$3"' = \"/;' $HOME/.ff;\

;;

esac

;;

esac;

}

v(){

local a=$HOME;

sed '

s/export /less -n \$/;

s/=.*//;

' $a/.ff > $a/.v ;

. $a/.v ;

}

Another approach using ls(1)

lsl(){

_lsl ()

{

ls -l $3 /mnt/*/$1* 2>/dev/null;

};

case $# in

0)

echo "usage: lsl pat [ls-options|result-no]";

echo "usage: lsle pat [sed-cmds]"

;;

1)

_lsl $1 |sed =

;;

2)

case $2 in

-*) _lsl $1 $@;;

*)

_lsl $1 |sed 's/.* //;

'"$2"'!d;

'"$2"'q' > $HOME/.lsl ;

export v=$(sed 1q $HOME/.lsl);

echo \$v = $v

;;

esac

;;

esac;

}

exp(){

echo "%s/\$/ /";

echo "%j";

echo "s/^/export v=\"";

echo "s/\$/\"";

echo "s/ \"\$/\"";

echo ".";

echo "wq";

}

lsle(){

lsl $1 -1 |sed $2 > .lsl&&

exp |ed -s .lsl >&-&&

. .lsl&&

echo \$v = $v;

}

top
2009-03-18 00:03:42
User: Zenexer
Functions: top
-5

A simple but effective replacement for ps aux. I used to waste my time running ps over and over; top is the way to go. It also allows complex sorting options. Press q to exit "nicely" (Ctrl + C is always an option, of course). Note that the list updates each second, resorting in the process; if you're trying to grab a specific PID, you might be better off with ps.

htop

Alternatively, htop is available, though it may not come pre-installed. htop is slightly more interactive than top and includes color coding, visuals, and a nice interface for selecting and then killing processes. (Thanks to bwoodacre for this great tool.)