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

Iterate through current directory + all subs for C++ header files and rank by # of comments
This shows you which files are most in need of commenting (one line of output per file)

Convert a flv video file to avi using mencoder

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

Press Any Key to Continue
Halt script progress until a key has been pressed. Source: http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php/mirroring/bashfaq/065

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" }

Get absolut path to your bash-script
Another way of doing it that's a bit clearer. I'm a fan of readable code.

Generate White Noise
This command will generate white noise through your speakers (assuming you have sound enabled). It's good for staying focused, privacy, coping with tinnitus, etc. I use it to test that the sound works.

Mount important virtual system directories under chroot'ed directory
The command is useful when, e.g., booting an existing system with a rescue or installation CD where you need to chroot into the hard-disk and be able to do stuff which accesses kernel info (e.g. when installing Ubuntu desktop with LVM2 you need to mount and chroot the hard disk from a shell window in order to install packages and run initramfs inside chroot). The command assumes that /mnt/xxx is where the chroot'ed environment's root file system on the hard disk is mounted.

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Clean your broken terminal
When some console full-screen program (minicom, vi, some installers) breaks down your terminal, try this command to revert all options to "sane" settings (sane is a built-in combo of a lot of stty options)


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: