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.

Get involved!

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

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

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

UpGuard checks and validates configurations for every major OS, network device, and cloud provider.
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

May 19, 2015 - A Look At The New Commandlinefu
I've put together a short writeup on what kind of newness you can expect from the next iteration of clfu. Check it out here.
March 2, 2015 - New Management
I'm Jon, I'll be maintaining and improving clfu. Thanks to David for building such a great resource!
Hide

Top Tags


awk, bash, curl, find, grep, Linux, sed
Hide

Functions

All commands from sorted by
Terminal - All commands - 12,420 results
find . -exec grep foobar /dev/null {} \; | awk -F: '{print $1}' | xargs vi
2009-09-03 16:02:18
User: verboEse
Functions: awk find grep xargs
Tags: vim awk find grep
-1
Up
Down
Edit all files found having a specific string found by grep

needs no GNU tools, as far as I see it

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
mp32ogg file.mp3
2009-11-16 20:22:48
User: nickleus
-1
Up
Down
convert mp3 to ogg

why would you want to convert mp3's to ogg? 1 reason is because ardour doesn't support mp3 files because of legal issues. this is really the only reason you would do this, unless you have really bad hearing and also want smaller file sizes, because converting from one lossy format to another isn't a good idea.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
jot -b '#' -s '' $COLUMNS
2010-04-13 22:03:39
User: dennisw
Tags: tr tput printf
-1
Up
Down
Print a row of characters across the terminal

For BSD-based systems, including OS X, that don't have seq.

This version provides a default using tput in case $COLUMNS is not set:

jot -b '#' -s '' ${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}
Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sed -i 's/[ \t]\+$//g' file.txt
2011-09-07 01:47:44
User: elder
Functions: sed
Tags: sed regex
-1
Up
Down
Remove trailing whitespaces (or tabs) from a text file

This command is useful when you are programming, for example.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
net user USERNAME /domain
2014-01-02 20:22:46
User: shawn_abdushakur
Tags: windows
-1
Up
Down
Show all groups user is a member of and other useful info
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
wget -r --wait=5 --quota=5000m --tries=3 --directory-prefix=/home/erin/Documents/erins_webpages --limit-rate=20k --level=1 -k -p -erobots=off -np -N --exclude-domains=del.icio.us,doubleclick.net -F -i ./delicious-20090629.htm
2009-07-02 01:46:21
User: bbelt16ag
Functions: wget
-1
Up
Down
my command for downloading delicious web links,

just a alternative using a saved html file of all of my bookmarks. works well although it takes awhile.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cat /proc/cpuinfo
2010-09-24 09:27:58
User: magicjohnson_
Functions: cat
Tags: bash cpuinfo
-1
Up
Down
CPU architecture details

It works in every linux box

Show sample output | Comments (62) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ash prod<tab>
2012-05-12 19:51:02
User: c3w
Tags: ssh screen osx json ruby
-1
Up
Down
OSX Terminal helper with tab completion, ssh tunneling, and now screen re-attach

http://github.com/c3w/ash

. a Ruby SSH helper script

. reads a JSON config file to read host, FQDN, user, port, tunnel options

. changes OSX Terminal profiles based on host 'type'

USAGE:

put 'ash' ruby script in your PATH

modify and copy ashrc-dist to ~/.ashrc

configure OSX Terminal profiles, such as "webserver", "development", etc

run "ash myhostname" and away you go!

v.2 will re-attach to a 'screen' named in your ~/.ashrc

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ls
2013-03-14 01:28:01
User: yingkailiang
Functions: ls
-1
Up
Down
ls
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
curl -k https://Username:[email protected]/v1/posts/all?red=api | xml2| \grep [email protected]' | cut -d\= -f 2- | sort | uniq | linkchecker -r0 --stdin --complete -v -t 50 -F blacklist
2013-05-04 17:43:21
User: bbelt16ag
Functions: cut sort uniq
Tags: bash curl delicious xml2 linkchecker
-1
Up
Down
check your up to date delicious links.

This commands queries the delicious api then runs the xml through xml2, grabs the urls cuts out the first two columns, passes through uniq to remove duplicates if any, and then goes into linkchecker who checks the links. the links go the blacklist in ~/.linkchecker/blacklist. please see the manual pages for further info peeps. I took me a few days to figure this one out. I how you enjoy it. Also don't run these api more then once a few seconds you can get banned by delicious see their site for info. ~updated for no recursive

Show sample output | Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -name "*.php" -exec grep -il searchphrase {} \;
2010-01-16 05:09:30
User: unixmonkey7797
Functions: find grep
-1
Up
Down
Find all files containing a word

This is very similar to the first example except that it employs the 'exec' argument of the find command rather than piping the result to xargs. The second example is nice and tidy but different *NIXs may not have as capable a grep command.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -s * | sort -nr | head
2010-05-13 12:21:22
User: chenge
Functions: du sort
-1
Up
Down
identify big file

first 10 big file

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ffmpeg -r 12 -i img%03d.jpg -sameq -s hd720 -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 OUTPUT.MP4
2013-05-04 18:46:36
User: brainstorm
-1
Up
Down
Timelapse with ffmpeg (after symlinking pictures as per ffmpeg FAQ)
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f -exec grep -qi 'foo' {} \; -print0 | xargs -0 vim
2009-09-03 17:55:26
User: arcege
Functions: find grep xargs
Tags: vim find grep
-1
Up
Down
Edit all files found having a specific string found by grep

Make sure that find does not touch anything other than regular files, and handles non-standard characters in filenames while passing to xargs.

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
pear config-set http_proxy http://myusername:[email protected]:8080
2010-05-13 14:44:03
User: KoRoVaMiLK
-1
Up
Down
Pear install behind proxy

Useful since

"export http_proxy=blahblah:8080"

doesn't seem to work with pear

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
aptitude show $PROGRAM | grep Vers
2009-02-27 23:24:37
User: aabilio
Functions: grep
-1
Up
Down
know which version of the program is installed on your Debian and derivatives

Output: Version 3.2-0 (for example if you type # aptitude show bash | grep Vers

Depends on the language of your distribution, because the name of the word "Version" in other languages may be different.

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
xrandr -q | grep -w Screen
2010-02-14 15:38:49
User: hemanth
Functions: grep
Tags: xrandr xorg
-1
Up
Down
Get minimum, current, maximum possible resolution of Xorg
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
file=orig.ps; for i in $(seq `grep "Pages:" $file | sed 's/%%Pages: //g'`); do psselect $i $file $i\_$file; done
2010-09-24 19:44:32
User: damncool
Functions: file sed seq
-1
Up
Down
split a postscript file

splits a postscript file into multiple postscript files. for each page of the input file one output file will be generated. The files will be numbered for example 1_orig.ps 2_orig.ps ...

The psselect commad is part of the psutils package

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch -n 10 free -m
2014-01-04 10:10:15
User: Darkstar
Functions: free watch
Tags: memory usage bash
-1
Up
Down
A simple overview of memory usage refreshed at user designated intervals.

This command shows a high level overview of system memory and usage refreshed in seconds. Change -n 10 to you desired refresh interval.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
readlink -f /proc/<pid>/cmdline
2009-05-26 10:09:03
User: naseer
Functions: readlink
-1
Up
Down
Find the full path of an already running process

Uses the pid to get the full path of the process. Useful when you do not which command got picked from the path

Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for each in *; do file="$each."; name=${file%%.*}; suffix=${file#*.}; mv "$each" "$(echo $name | rot13)${suffix:+.}${suffix%.}"; done
2010-03-20 16:11:12
User: hfs
Functions: mv
Tags: file rename rot13
-1
Up
Down
Filenames ROT13

This got a bit complicated, because I had to introduce an additional dot at the end that has to be removed again later.

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ls --color=never -1| grep -E "[0-9]{4}"|sed -re "s/^(.*)([0-9]{4})(.*)$/\2 \1\2\3/" | sort -r
2014-01-04 20:50:12
User: ysangkok
Functions: grep ls sed sort
Tags: extract sort sed grep filename
-1
Up
Down
Sort files in $PWD by year embedded anywhere in filename
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
netstat -4tnape
2009-05-26 11:50:52
User: gnuyoga
Functions: netstat
-1
Up
Down
display only tcp
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
wtzc () { wget "$@"; foo=`echo "$@" | sed 's:.*/::'`; tar xzvf $foo; blah=`echo $foo | sed 's:,*/::'`; bar=`echo $blah | sed -e 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/' -e 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'`; cd $bar; ls; }
2010-01-17 11:25:47
User: oshazard
Functions: cd sed tar wget
-1
Up
Down
wget, tar xzvf, cd, ls

Combines a few repetitive tasks when compiling source code. Especially useful when a hypen in a file-name breaks tab completion.

1.) wget source.tar.gz

2.) tar xzvf source.tar.gz

3.) cd source

4.) ls

From there you can run ./configure, make and etc.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
split -b4m file.tgz file.tgz. ; for i in file.tgz.*; do SUBJ="Backup Archive"; MSG="Archive File Attached"; echo $MSG | mutt -a $i -s $SUBJ YourEmail@(E)mail.com
2010-03-20 16:49:19
User: tboulay
Functions: echo split
Tags: backup email split archive mutt
-1
Up
Down
Split a file into equal size chunks and archive to (e)mail account.

This is just a little snippit to split a large file into smaller chunks (4mb in this example) and then send the chunks off to (e)mail for archival using mutt.

I usually encrypt the file before splitting it using openssl:

openssl des3 -salt -k <password> -in file.tgz -out file.tgz.des3

To restore, simply save attachments and rejoin them using:

cat file.tgz.* > output_name.tgz

and if encrypted, decrypt using:

openssl des3 -d -salt -k <password> -in file.tgz.des3 -out file.tgz

edit: (changed "g" to "e" for political correctness)

Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate