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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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Zip a directory on Mac OS X and ignore .DS_Store (metadata) directory
If you want to generate a cross-platform compatible zip file and ignore the Finder's hidden metadata directory

recursive search and replace old with new string, inside files
If you can install rpl it's simpler to use and faster than combinations of find, grep and sed. See man rpl for various options. time on above operation: real 0m0.862s, user 0m0.548s, sys 0m0.180s using find + sed: real 0m3.546s, user 0m1.752s, sys 0m1.580s

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.

Update twitter via curl

Print a list of installed Perl modules
This version works on an AIX system on which I have very limited permissions. The other version fails with "Can't open file /usr/opt/perl588/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/aix/auto/DBI/.packlist".

re-assign line numbers

Randomize lines in a file
This appends a random number as a first filed of all lines in SOMEFILE then sorts by the first column and finally cuts of the random numbers.

Output files without comments or empty lines
Filter comments and empty lines in files. I find this very useful when trying to find what values are actually set in a very long example config file. I often set an alias for it, like : alias nocomment='grep -v "^\($\|#\)"'

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

convert a web page into a png
This requires the command-line print extension (see #2861 for more details). I use it to make up complex images with formatted text using CSS and whatnot. It's a lot slicker than imagemagick for certain things. Now imagine using a local webserver with PHP and a database to generate the images. Oh, the possibilities...


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