All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Login as another user in shell
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

su <username>

dsetton · 2014-02-01 19:45:37 6
shell bash iterate number range with for loop

iterating range of numer with for loop in shell or bash Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
```
-1

rangeBegin=10; rangeEnd=20; for numbers in $(eval echo "{$rangeBegin..$rangeEnd}"); do echo $numbers;done

aysadk · 2019-07-26 09:19:44 230
use curl to resume a failed download

If you are downloading a big file (or even a small one) and the connection breaks or times out, use this command in order to RESUME the download where it failed, instead of having to start downloading from the beginning. This is a real win for downloading debian ISO images over a buggy DSL modem. Take the partially downloaded file and cat it into the STDIN of curl, as shown. Then use the "-C -" option followed by the URL of the file you were originally downloading. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 17.1M  100 17.1M    0     0   746k      0  0:00:23  0:00:23 --:--:--  793k
```
-1

cat file-that-failed-to-download.zip | curl -C - http://www.somewhere.com/file-I-want-to-download.zip >successfully-downloaded.zip

linuxrawkstar · 2009-08-05 13:33:06 16
Send web page by e-mail

This will send the web page at $u to recipient@example.com . To send the web page to oneself, recipient@example.com can be replaced by $(whoami) or $USER. The "charset" is UTF-8 here, but any alternative charset of your choice would work. `wget -O - -o /dev/null $u` may be considered instead of `curl $u` . On some systems the complete path to sendmail may be necessary, for instance /sys/pkg/libexec/sendmail/sendmail for some NetBSD.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

{ u="http://twitter.com/commandlinefu"; echo "Subject: $u"; echo "Mime-Version: 1.0"; echo -e "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n"; curl $u ; } | sendmail $USER

pascalvaucheret · 2010-02-24 04:18:30 5
Better PS aliases

#ps aliases PSO='user,pid,ppid,%cpu,%mem,time,start,state,command' PSOA='user,pid,time,state,command' PSOL='user,pid,ppid,%cpu,%mem,nice,pri,etime,time,tt,state,ucomm' export PSO PSOA PSOL function _ps { /bin/ps $@ ; } alias ps='_ps ax -o $PSO' alias psa='_ps ax -o $PSOA' alias psl='_ps ax -o $PSOL' alias psm='_ps -U $USER -o $PSOA'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

export PSOA='user,pid,time,state,command' ; function _ps { /bin/ps $@ ; } ; alias psa='_ps ax -o $PSOA'

mattmartini · 2010-05-27 02:07:56 3
Move files around local filesystem with tar without wasting space using an intermediate tarball.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tar -C <source> -cf - . | tar -C <destination> -xf -

Tekhne · 2009-07-10 21:16:23 4
show the log of a branch since its creation

The command show the log of a branch, stopping the output at the time of branch creation.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

svn log . --stop-on-copy

reaper · 2010-02-24 12:37:18 3
Serve current directory tree at http://$HOSTNAME:8080/

Install twistd first with sudo apt-get install python-twistd-web
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

twistd -no web

nkorth · 2014-02-01 22:35:50 7
find unmaintained ports that are installed on your system

only works for freeBSD where ports are installed in /usr/ports credit to http://wiki.freebsd.org/PortsTasks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cd /usr/ports; grep -F "`for o in \`pkg_info -qao\` ; \ do echo "|/usr/ports/${o}|" ; done`" `make -V INDEXFILE` | \ grep -i \|ports@freebsd.org\| | cut -f 2 -d \|

grep · 2009-02-16 21:07:35 8
Go to begin of current command line

Go to begin of the current command line.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

CTRL + a

hardest · 2009-03-23 16:41:04 8
Day Date Time> Instead of $ or # at the terminal
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

export PS1='\D{%a %D %T}> '

hemanth · 2009-08-22 08:07:47 4
Go to next dir

Add dirs to list: pushd /tmp /tmp ~ then cd - /home/user cd - /tmp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cd -

magicjohnson_ · 2011-07-05 05:28:32 6
creates a xkcd #936-style password
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

RANGE=`wc -l /usr/share/dict/words | sed 's/^$[0-9]*$ .*$/\1/'`; for i in {1..4}; do let "N = $RANDOM % $RANGE"; sed -n -e "${N}p" /usr/share/dict/words | tr -d '\n'; done; RANGE=100; let "N = $RANDOM % $RANGE"; echo $N

unixmonkey24597 · 2011-08-16 07:04:57 3
share single file in LAN via netcat
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

while :; do cat file.txt | nc -l 80; done

kev · 2011-09-15 13:16:20 5
make comments invisible when editing a file

you should choose proper color to make comments invisible.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

vim -c'highlight Comment ctermfg=white' my.conf

kev · 2011-10-21 00:53:03 67
Cloning hard disks over the network:

This is a bit to bit copy so if you have a 500GB hard disk it will take a long time even if have Gigabit Ethernet
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

Boot up destination machine with Knoppix live CD and run nc -l -p 9000 | dd of=/dev/sda Then on the master dd if=/dev/sda | nc <dest-ip> 9000 You can monitor bandwidth usage to see progress: nload eth0 -u M

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 05:26:58 6
List files that DO NOT match a pattern

There's no need for ls or grep; printf is builtin to most modern shells
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

printf "%s\n" !(pattern) ## ksh, or bash with shopt -s extglob

cfajohnson · 2009-11-26 14:09:56 3
Terrorist threat level text

Numbers are less understandable then words. Also this may put out a different result.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

echo "Terrorist threat level: `sed $(perl -e "print int rand(99999)")"q;d" /usr/share/dict/words`"

houghi · 2011-01-28 09:49:37 4
Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

Doesn't use shuf, its much faster with "shuf -n4" instead of sort -R Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
trample tylenol parawing bycatch 
```
-1

sort -R /usr/share/dict/british | grep -v -m4 ^\{1,10\}$ | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] | tr "\n" " " | tr -d "'s" | xargs -0 echo

takac · 2011-08-16 10:11:21 4
multiline re search recursive
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

pcregrep --color -M -N CRLF -e "SQLEngine\.\w+\W*$[^$]*\)" -r --include='\.java$'

hute37 · 2012-01-16 09:19:40 6
Show header HTTP with tcpdump

This is a better way to do the "src X or dst X" filter; plus you might not want to bother with DNS lookups (-n).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tcpdump -s 1024 -l -A -n host 192.168.9.56

wejn · 2013-02-02 22:29:52 5
Dump an aspell dictionary as a word list
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

aspell -d en dump master | aspell -l en expand > words

xocoalt · 2014-05-05 21:28:24 7
bored of listing files with ls wanna see them in file browser in gnome try this

Opens the current working directory in the user's preferred application using freedesktop.org's xdg-open.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

xdg-open .

schlaegel · 2010-10-05 04:20:31 6
Convert windows text file to linux text document
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sed 's/.$//' Win-file.txt

totti · 2011-09-15 19:07:51 4
Show the system properties in a Sun VirtualBox server

How to show the system properties of a Sun VirtualBox server
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

VBoxManage list systemproperties

0disse0 · 2010-04-23 06:43:49 6
‹ First < 472 473 474 475 476 > Last ›

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

Sort on multiple dis-contiguous keys/fields (can even specify key number/field from the end)

Notes: 1) -n-1 means sort key is the last field 2) -l is important if each separate record is on a new line (usually so for text files) 3) -j tells msort not to create log file (msort.log) in the working directory 4) may need to install msort package. 5) msort does lot more. Check man msort

Pass TAB as field separator to sort, join, cut, etc.

Use this BASH trick to create a variable containing the TAB character and pass it as the argument to sort, join, cut and other commands which don't understand the \t notation. $ sort -t $'\t' ... $ join -t $'\t' ... $ cut -d $'\t' ...

Copy the sound content of a video to an mp3 file

-vn removes tha video content, the copy option tells ffmpeg to use the same codec for generating the output

watch your network load on specific network interface

-n means refresh frequency you could change eth0 to any interface you want, like wlan0

Git Global search and replace

Find all the occurrences in the git repo of 'foo' and replace with 'bar'

generate random password

for Mac OS X

Schedule a script or command in x num hours, silently run in the background even if logged out

doesn't require "at", change the "2h" to whatever you want... (deafult unit for sleep is seconds)

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"

Open screen on the previous command

I often find myself wanting to open screen on whatever command I'm currently running. Unfortunately, opening a fresh screen session spawns a new bash session, which doesn't keep my history, so calling screen directly with the previous command is the only way to go.

Restrict the bandwidth for the SCP command

the command is obvious, I know, but maybe not everyone knows that using the parameter "-l" you can limit the use of bandwidth command scp. In this example fetch all files from the directory zutaniddu and I copy them locally using only 10 Kbs

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by