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

Download all images from a 4chan thread
First (and only) argument should be a 4chan thread URL.

Generate QR code for a WiFi hotspot
Prompts for network name (SSID) and password, and generates (as qr-wifi.png) a WiFi QR code (e.g. "WIFI:S:mynet;T:WPA;P:mypass;;" for mynet/mypass). Dependencies [sudo apt-get install]: qrencode zenity

gpg decrypt several files
Change directory (cd) to the directory where all your encrypted files are placed, and then run the command - then you are asked to insert your secret gpg password - ubuntu 8.04

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md
Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md

Replaces a color in a PDF document, useful for removing a dark background before printing.
The pdf is first converted to a bitmap, so change "-density" to match your printer resolution. Also be careful about the RAM required. In this example rgb(0,0,0) is replaced by rgb(255,255,255), change to suit your needs.

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" }

Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions - (Open)solaris version with RBAC

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" }

Getting the last argument from the previous command

Do a command but skip recording it in the bash command history
Note the extra space before the command (I had to put it as an underscore since the website eats up preceding spaces). That's all it takes. Now if you check your history with "$ history", it wont show up.


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: