All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Merge ( directories [looking for improvement]

Using a GUI file managers you can merge directories (cut and paste). This command roughly does the same (it doesn't ask for confirmation (no problem for me) and it doesn't clean up the empty SRC directories (no problem, trivial). probably does the same: cp -l SRC TARGET; rm -rf SRC
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(cd SRC; find . -type d -exec mkdir TARGET/{} ";"; find . -type f -exec mv {} TARGET/{} ";")

karel1980 · 2009-08-17 12:35:48 11
60 second on screen timer for bash scripts
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

i=60;while [ $i -gt 0 ];do if [ $i -gt 9 ];then printf "\b\b$i";else printf "\b\b $i";fi;sleep 1;i=`expr $i - 1`;done

barnesmjsa · 2011-09-08 18:14:48 3
cat without comments

cat without comments
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cat /etc/squid/squid.conf | grep -v '^#' | sed '/^$/d'

Bafus · 2012-01-03 08:18:07 14
revert the unstaged modifications in a git working directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

git diff | git apply --reverse

samer · 2012-05-15 22:36:33 3
Change wallpaper random

Change your Desktop background/wallpaper with feh lightweight command. fill background directory with appropriate content.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

feh --bg-scale "`ls -d $HOME/backgrounds/* |sort -R |tail -1`"

bertatum · 2013-03-16 16:05:48 5
Force a kernel panic

Well, this is quite useful for testing if your hardware watchdog is working properly.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger

fangfufu · 2013-05-07 19:41:40 6
Split an image in half for use on dual screens (mostly for use under KDE which treats each screen separately)

Output should be two JPG files named like "output-1.jpg" and "output-2.jpg". The convert command is part of ImageMagick so you'll need that and dependent packages installed to use it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

convert yourdoublewideimage.jpg -crop 50%x100% +repage output.jpg

pagesix1536 · 2014-01-15 15:34:41 8
Create a git commit with no message

This is especially useful for adding changes to a temporary repo, such as a Gist. Avoid using this when collaborating with others.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

git commit --allow-empty-message --message ""

nicolasmccurdy · 2014-07-16 02:06:39 15
Daemonize Node.js apps and ease your system administration workflow

I'm the author of PM2 and wrote this tool, and I'm please to share it here. Github project link: https://github.com/Unitech/pm2 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Success true.
```
0

pm2 start app.js

strzel_a · 2014-11-07 23:15:12 10
Live stream a remote video device over ssh using ffmpeg

Change bitrate with option '-b'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ssh user@host ffmpeg -b 200 -an -f video4linux2 \ -s 960x720 -r 10 -i /dev/video0 -b 200 -f ogg - \ | mplayer - -idle -demuxer ogg

dkaliberda · 2015-02-27 19:05:26 8
check open ports without netstat or lsof

Order and uniq
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

declare -a array=($(tail -n +2 /proc/net/tcp | cut -d":" -f"3"|cut -d" " -f"1")) && for port in ${array[@]}; do echo $((0x$port)); done | sort | uniq

lucasjr76 · 2016-08-19 03:20:59 18
create video from image series
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ffmpeg -f image2 -r 15 -i pic.%04d.png -r 15 -b:v 8M vid15.avi

ceddi · 2016-10-17 19:50:16 17
Download a zipped file and extract it in one line

The example uses hashicorps packer as the sample file, but any .zip file which only contains a single file will work. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
packer
```
0

curl -Ss https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.0.0/packer_1.0.0_linux_amd64.zip | zcat > packer

hvindin · 2017-04-25 22:03:11 21
Print all git repos from a user

Python is installed on many boxes (in case you could not afford installing jq).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

curl -s "https://api.github.com/users/<username>/repos?per_page=1000" | python <(echo "import json,sys;v=json.load(sys.stdin);for i in v:; print(i['git_url']);" | tr ';' '\n')

grault · 2019-12-07 10:49:58 106
One liner gdb attach to Acrobat
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(acroread &);sleep 2;gdb /opt/Adobe/Reader8/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread `pidof ld-linux.so.2`

rhythmx · 2009-04-29 16:23:48 11
Calculator on the go

Handy use of bc in the command line. No need to get 'into' the bc to perform calculations Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
# echo 2+3 |bc
5
```
0

echo 2+3 |bc

Kaio · 2009-07-04 22:03:41 12
List your largest installed packages (on Debian/Ubuntu)

List packages and their disk usage in decreasing order. This uses the "Installed-Size" from the package metadata. It may differ from the actual used space, because e.g. data files (think of databases) or log files may take additional space. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
342348  netbeans-ide
231728  kdelibs4-doc
121332  comixcursors
108796  openoffice.org-core
[...]
```
0

perl -ne '$pkg=$1 if m/^Package: (.*)/; print "$1\t$pkg\n" if m/^Installed-Size: (.*)/;' < /var/lib/dpkg/status | sort -rn | less

hfs · 2009-10-19 12:55:59 7
shows the full path of shell commands
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

type <command>

prayer · 2010-02-15 21:47:18 5
Find PHP files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep -i -H "search pharse" {} \;

wr8cr8 · 2010-07-22 11:54:45 17
Handling oracle alter log file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

awk '{if ($1~/Sun|Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat/) {DATE=$2" "$3" "$4" "$5 } else {print DATE"|"$0}}' alterorcl.log

hxre · 2010-11-26 01:40:58 4
Displays All TCP and UDP Connections
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

sudo netstat|head -n2|tail -n1 && sudo netstat -a|grep udp && echo && sudo netstat|head -n2|tail -n1 && sudo netstat -a|grep tcp

brando56894 · 2011-09-08 18:54:36 3
Remove the first and the latest caracter of a string

Just an other solution :)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

echo foobar | sed -r 's/(^.|.$)//g'

ebraminio · 2011-11-19 16:19:07 3
Fast way to get the product of every number in a file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(sed 's/^/x*=/' file ; echo x) | bc

fallen3angel · 2012-01-03 13:45:25 3
Display count of log entries via the previous minute for graphing purposes. Example given is for DHCPREQUESTS on an ISC dhcp service log.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

DATE=`date +"%H:%M" --date '-1 min'`; egrep "\ $DATE\:..\ " /var/log/dhcpd.log |awk '/DHCPREQUEST/ {split($3,t,":"); printf("%02d:%02d\n",t[1],t[2]);}' |uniq -c;

jobewan · 2013-03-17 02:23:37 5
Hex Dump
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

hexdump -C file

qistoph · 2013-05-07 20:40:02 13
‹ First < 462 463 464 465 466 > 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

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server

Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

save date and time for each command in history

for the change stay in your history file , export command by writing it into your .bashrc

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Perl one-liner to determine number of days since the Unix epoch

There are some environments that use this value for password and account expiration. It's helpful to be able to quickly determine the number of days since the Unix epoch (dse) when working directly with the configuration files as an administrator.

Write comments to your history.

A null operation with the name 'comment', allowing comments to be written to HISTFILE. Prepending '#' to a command will *not* write the command to the history file, although it will be available for the current session, thus '#' is not useful for keeping track of comments past the current session.

Copy a file over SSH without SCP

Want to known what time is it in another part of the world ?

available timezone can be found in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Other examples: $ TZ=Europe/Paris date; TZ=Australia/Sydney date; TZ=America/New_York date this is based on zoneinfo files on macosx. Your mileage my vary on other unix dialects

Adding Prefix to File name

Adding course name prefix to lecture pdfs

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

Create and access directory at the same time

Create and access directory (edited)

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