All commands (14,187)

  • Remove trailing whitespaces (or tabs) from a text file

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


    -1
    sed -i 's/[ \t]\+$//g' file.txt
    elder · 2011-09-07 01:47:44 9
  • Show all groups user is a member of and other useful info


    -1
    net user USERNAME /domain
    shawn_abdushakur · 2014-01-02 20:22:46 7
  • 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.


    -1
    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
    bbelt16ag · 2009-07-02 01:46:21 7
  • CPU architecture details

    It works in every linux box Show Sample Output


    -1
    cat /proc/cpuinfo
    magicjohnson_ · 2010-09-24 09:27:58 3
  • 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


    -1
    ash prod<tab>
    c3w · 2012-05-12 19:51:02 8
  • ls


    -1
    ls
    yingkailiang · 2013-03-14 01:28:01 5
  • 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


    -1
    curl -k https://Username:Password@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all?red=api | xml2| \grep '@href' | cut -d\= -f 2- | sort | uniq | linkchecker -r0 --stdin --complete -v -t 50 -F blacklist
    bbelt16ag · 2013-05-04 17:43:21 8
  • 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.


    -1
    find . -name "*.php" -exec grep -il searchphrase {} \;
    unixmonkey7797 · 2010-01-16 05:09:30 4
  • identify big file

    first 10 big file


    -1
    du -s * | sort -nr | head
    chenge · 2010-05-13 12:21:22 4
  • Timelapse with ffmpeg (after symlinking pictures as per ffmpeg FAQ)


    -1
    ffmpeg -r 12 -i img%03d.jpg -sameq -s hd720 -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 OUTPUT.MP4
    brainstorm · 2013-05-04 18:46:36 9
  • hardcode dnsserver, no more rewriting of etc/resolv.conf

    The while loop is an overkill, it would be simpler to prevent the file to be modified. That said, none of the proposed solutions are such: a real one would go to the source of the problem.


    -1
    chkmod -w /etc/resolve.conf
    ntropia · 2018-05-14 16:25:47 163
  • 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.


    -1
    find . -type f -exec grep -qi 'foo' {} \; -print0 | xargs -0 vim
    arcege · 2009-09-03 17:55:26 7
  • Pear install behind proxy

    Useful since "export http_proxy=blahblah:8080" doesn't seem to work with pear Show Sample Output


    -1
    pear config-set http_proxy http://myusername:mypassword@corporateproxy:8080
    KoRoVaMiLK · 2010-05-13 14:44:03 30
  • 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.


    -1
    aptitude show $PROGRAM | grep Vers
    aabilio · 2009-02-27 23:24:37 8
  • Get minimum, current, maximum possible resolution of Xorg


    -1
    xrandr -q | grep -w Screen
    hemanth · 2010-02-14 15:38:49 3
  • 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


    -1
    file=orig.ps; for i in $(seq `grep "Pages:" $file | sed 's/%%Pages: //g'`); do psselect $i $file $i\_$file; done
    damncool · 2010-09-24 19:44:32 4
  • 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


    -1
    watch -n 10 free -m
    Darkstar · 2014-01-04 10:10:15 12
  • 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


    -1
    readlink -f /proc/<pid>/cmdline
    naseer · 2009-05-26 10:09:03 23
  • 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.


    -1
    for each in *; do file="$each."; name=${file%%.*}; suffix=${file#*.}; mv "$each" "$(echo $name | rot13)${suffix:+.}${suffix%.}"; done
    hfs · 2010-03-20 16:11:12 6
  • Sort files in $PWD by year embedded anywhere in filename


    -1
    ls --color=never -1| grep -E "[0-9]{4}"|sed -re "s/^(.*)([0-9]{4})(.*)$/\2 \1\2\3/" | sort -r
    ysangkok · 2014-01-04 20:50:12 9
  • display only tcp


    -1
    netstat -4tnape
    gnuyoga · 2009-05-26 11:50:52 5
  • 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


    -1
    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; }
    oshazard · 2010-01-17 11:25:47 3
  • 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)


    -1
    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
    tboulay · 2010-03-20 16:49:19 8
  • Find Out My Linux Distribution Name and Version


    -1
    if [ -x /etc/*-release ]; then cat /etc/*-release ; else cat /etc/*-version ; fi
    hugoeustaquio · 2011-06-22 14:09:24 3
  • Transfer files with rsync over ssh on a non-standard port.

    Transfer files with rsync over ssh on a non-standard port, showing a progress bar and resuming partial transfers.


    -1
    rsync -P -e 'ssh -p PORT' SRC DEST
    vickio · 2011-10-13 08:59:07 4
  • ‹ First  < 498 499 500 501 502 >  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

list files recursively by size

Unite pdf files
pdfunite is a part of the poppler-utils. poppler-utils package is only 150KB. The alternative - pdftk package is 14MB! Install poppler-utils if you need simple pdf operation commands like unite, separate, info, text/html conversions

To get you started!
Do it.

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"

Clear filesystem memory cache
Found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=589975

Set OS X X11 to use installed Mathematica fonts

grab all commandlinefu shell functions into a single file, suitable for sourcing.
Each shell function has its own summary line, as a comment. If there are multiple shell functions with the same name, the function with the highest number of votes is put into the file. Note: added 'grep -v' to the end of the pipeline, to eliminate extraneous lines containing only '--'. Thanks to matthewbauer for pointing this out.

Add directory to $PATH if it's not already there
Sometimes in a script you want to make sure that a directory is in the path, and add it in if it's not already there. In this example, $dir contains the new directory you want to add to the path if it's not already present. There are multiple ways to do this, but this one is a nice clean shell-internal approach. I based it on http://stackoverflow.com/a/1397020. You can also do it using tr to separate the path into lines and grep -x to look for exact matches, like this: $ if ! $(echo "$PATH" | tr ":" "\n" | grep -qx "$dir") ; then PATH=$PATH:$dir ; fi which I got from http://stackoverflow.com/a/5048977. Or replace the "echo | tr" part with a shell parameter expansion, like $ if ! $(echo "${PATH//:/$'\n'}" | grep -qx "$dir") ; then PATH=$PATH:$dir ; fi which I got from http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3209/. There are also other more regex-y ways to do it, but I find the ones listed here easiest to follow. Note some of this is specific to the bash shell.

Lists the size of certain file in every 10 seconds
watch is a command especially designed for doing this job

back ssh from firewalled hosts
host B (you) redirects a modem port (62220) to his local ssh. host A is a remote machine (the ones that issues the ssh cmd). once connected port 5497 is in listening mode on host B. host B just do a ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 5497 -l user and reaches the remote host'ssh. This can be used also for vnc and so on.

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: