All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Print line numbers

Print out contents of file with line numbers. This version will print a number for every line, and separates the numbering from the line with a tab. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1     This is line 1.
2     This is line 2.
3
4     This is line 4.
```
-1

sed = <file> | sed 'N;s/\n/\t/'

jgc · 2009-12-11 14:39:14 3
Update twitter with curl
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

curl -u username:password -d status="blah blah blah" https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

sha · 2010-06-17 03:10:42 14
Print just line 4 from a textfile

d --> delete !d ---> delete others
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sed '4!d'

totti · 2011-09-05 17:54:57 3
Batch Convert SVG to PNG
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

for i in *; do inkscape $i --export-png=`echo $i | sed -e 's/svg$/png/'`; done

o0110o · 2014-03-24 12:15:58 9
create an mp3 with variable bitrate

The quality ranges between 0 to 9, with the smaller number indicates a higher quality file but bigger too.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

lame -h -V 6 track9.wav track9.mp3

dcabanis · 2009-05-23 23:27:20 4
How far is Mac OS X 10.6 from 64-bit?

Next time you see a mac fanboy bragging about 64-bitness of 10.6 give him this so he might sh? Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
   127	Mach-O 64-bit kext bundle x86_64
   314	Mach-O object i386
```
-1

file /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext/Contents/MacOS/* |grep -i x86_64 |nl |tail -1 |cut -f1 -f3 && file /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext/Contents/MacOS/* |grep -v x86_64 |nl |tail -1 |cut -f1 -f3

commandlinefu · 2009-09-03 14:28:02 6
kill a windows process
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

wmic process where (caption="notepad.exe") call terminate

Thomas · 2010-08-20 09:53:51 4

Used it on daily basis, not sure if it's any better than the OPs version, tho' One advantage is - you can replace 'bash' at the end of the line with eg. cat - to check if the generated command is OK. Show Sample Output

-1

mailq |awk '/MAILER-DAEMON/{gsub("*","");printf("postsuper -d %s\n",$1)}'|bash

unefunge · 2010-11-24 11:42:54 19

Print just line 4 from a textfile

Perl version - just for completeness sake ;)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

perl -ne '$. == 4 && print && exit'

bashrc · 2011-09-05 21:52:16 3
Add strikethrough to text

Uses Unicode combining characters to produce strikethrough effect. Since commandlinefu doesn't display Unicode properly, you will need to replace the dash in the code above with the Unicode long stroke overlay (U+0336).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

echo text | sed "s/$.$/\1-/g"

ppaschka · 2012-03-23 17:18:54 3
rsync from one remote to another remote, only local computer has an open ssh key

rsync by itself doesn't support copying between two remote hosts, but if you use sshfs you can pretend one of them is local. If you have a passphrase-less ssh-key, you can even put this script into a cron job. A faster alternative is to run ssh-keygen on remote1 and put the pubkey into remote2:~/.ssh/authorized_keys, running rsync on remote1 (or vice versa), but the problem with that is that now a hacker on remote1 can access remote2 at any time. The above method ensures your local computer stays the weak link. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
sending incremental file list
stuff/
stuff/file1.txt
```
-1

mkdir r1 && sshfs remote1:/home/user r1 && rsync r1/stuff remote2:~/backups/

unhammer · 2013-01-11 14:12:22 6
Sequential revision numbers in Git

Git uses secure hash sums for its revision numbers. I'm sure this is fine and dandy for ultra-secure computing, but it's less than optimal for humans. Thus, this will give you sequential revision numbers in Git all the way from the first commit.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

git rev-list --reverse HEAD | awk "/$(git log -n 1 --pretty="format:%h")/ {print NR}"

atoponce · 2011-11-15 21:49:32 4
Per country GET report, based on access log. Easy to transform to unique IP

Per country GET report, based on access log. Easy to transform to unique IP Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
     71 , Poland
    116 , France
    300 , United States
   2426 , Spain
```
-1

cat /var/log/nginx/access.log | grep -oe '^[0-9.]\+' | perl -ne 'system("geoiplookup $_")' | grep -v found | grep -oe ', [A-Za-z ]\+$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

theist · 2012-05-08 13:28:25 3
find and kill a zombie process

You cannot kill zombies, as they are already dead. But if you have too many zombies then kill parent process or restart service. You can kill zombie process using PID obtained from the above command. For example kill zombie proces having PID 4104: # kill -9 4104 Please note that kill -9 does not guarantee to kill a zombie process.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

kill -HUP `ps -A -ostat,ppid,pid,cmd | grep -e '^[Zz]' | awk '{print $2}'`

6peng · 2009-02-06 02:42:14 15
List of commands you use most often

This alternative cleans HISTTIMEFORMAT environment variable and calls gnuplot just after /tmp/cmds is closed, to avoid some errors.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

HISTTIMEFORMAT='' history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head > /tmp/cmds ; gnuplot -persist <<<'plot "/tmp/cmds" using 1:xticlabels(2) with boxes'

narcelio · 2010-06-17 17:38:16 3
validate xml in a shell script.

For debian likes, that's in python-xml package.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

xmlproc_parse.python-xml &>/dev/null <FILE> || exit 1

sputnick · 2009-12-11 17:30:03 5
a tail function for automatic smart output

tail() { thbin="/usr/bin/tail"; if [ "${1:0:1}" != "-" ]; then fc=$(($#==0?1:$#)); lpf="$((($LINES - 3 - 2 * $fc) / $fc))"; lpf="$(($lpf<1?2:$lpf))"; [ $fc -eq 1 ] && $thbin -n $lpf "$@" | /usr/bin/fold -w $COLUMNS | $thbin -n $lpf || $thbin -n $lpf "$@"; else $thbin "$@"; fi; unset lpf fc thbin; } This is a function that implements an improved version of tail. It tries to limit the number of lines so that the screen is filled completely. It works with pipes, single and multiple files. If you add different options to tail, they will overwrite the settings from the function. It doesn't work very well when too many files (with wrapped lines) are specified. Its optimised for my three-line prompt. It also works for head. Just s/tail/head/g Don't set 'thbin="tail"', this might lead to a forkbomb.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tail() { thbin="/usr/bin/tail"; if [ "${1:0:1}" != "-" ]; then fc=$(($#==0?1:$#)); lpf="$((($LINES - 3 - 2 * $fc) / $fc))"; lpf="$(($lpf<1?2:$lpf))"; [ $fc -eq 1 ] && $thbin -n $lpf "$@" | /usr/bin/fold -w $COLUMNS | $thbin -n $lpf || $thbin -n $lpf...

fpunktk · 2012-03-23 19:00:30 3
OS-X... create a quick look from the command line

Where "docname" is the document you want OS-X to image... file.txt, file.pdf, file.mov, etc Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Outputs an image
```
-1

qlmanage -p "yourfilename"

vaporub · 2009-02-16 07:15:03 68
Playback music in VLC without the GUI interface
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cvlc <somemusic.mp3>

dynaguy · 2011-03-25 20:03:19 3
CPU sucker

Use one CPU core entirely.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

while :; do :; done

livibetter · 2012-03-23 19:06:56 3
Google Translate

Change lang from ru to something else. Curl version - Mac OS etc, any system w/o wget. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
translate some text
```
-1

translate () {lang="ru"; text=`echo $* | sed 's/ /%20/g'`; curl -s -A "Mozilla/5.0" "http://translate.google.com/translate_a/t?client=t&text=$text&sl=auto&tl=$lang" | sed 's/\[\[\[\"//' | cut -d \" -f 1}

2b · 2014-07-10 18:26:34 9
Generrate Cryptographically Secure RANDOM PASSWORD

Explination: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2257441/random-string-generation-with-upper-case-letters-and-digits/23728630#23728630 Why 16 Characters: https://www.wired.com/story/7-steps-to-password-perfection/ Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
a7Bt4WGSz8hjJWIP
```
-1

python -c "import string; import random;print(''.join(random.SystemRandom().choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits + string.ascii_lowercase) for _ in range(16)))"

rootduck · 2019-06-14 17:35:12 39
Edit all files found having a specific string found by grep

needs no GNU tools, as far as I see it
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -exec grep foobar /dev/null {} \; | awk -F: '{print $1}' | xargs vi

verboEse · 2009-09-03 16:02:18 3
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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ mp32ogg *.mp3
mp32ogg v0.11
(c) 2000-2002 Nathan Walp
Released without warranty under the terms of the Artistic License

Converting echoed_-_Mystic_Beats.mp3 to OGG...
echoed_-_Mystic_Beats.ogg done!
Converting stateshirt_-_Chemma_Chi_-_vocals.mp3 to OGG...
stateshirt_-_Chemma_Chi_-_vocals.ogg done!
```
-1

mp32ogg file.mp3

nickleus · 2009-11-16 20:22:48 5
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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
################################################################################
```
-1

jot -b '#' -s '' $COLUMNS

dennisw · 2010-04-13 22:03:39 6
‹ First < 497 498 499 500 501 > 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

Bypass 1000 Entry limit of Active Directory with ldapsearch

That command bypass the entry limit specifing page results size, when the search arrive to the limit ldapsearch magically reiterate it from the last entry.

Print every Nth line

Sometimes commands give you too much feedback. Perhaps 1/100th might be enough. If so, every() is for you. $ my_verbose_command | every 100 will print every 100th line of output. Specifically, it will print lines 100, 200, 300, etc If you use a negative argument it will print the *first* of a block, $ my_verbose_command | every -100 It will print lines 1, 101, 201, 301, etc The function wraps up this useful sed snippet: $ ... | sed -n '0~100p' don't print anything by default $ sed -n starting at line 0, then every hundred lines ( ~100 ) print. $ '0~100p' There's also some bash magic to test if the number is negative: we want character 0, length 1, of variable N. $ ${N:0:1} If it *is* negative, strip off the first character ${N:1} is character 1 onwards (second actual character).

Make sure your script runs with a minimum Bash version

If you use new features of a certain Bash version in your shell script, make sure that it actually runs with the required version.

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"

Have your sound card call out elapsed time.

Useful contexts : You are doing yoga or some other physical training in which you are holding a position. Or you practice the pomodoro productivity technique. Or your girlfriend said "We're leaving in 40 minutes". Design details: sleep executes before espeak to give you a 5 seconds head start. espeak is run in the background so it doesn't mess up the timing.

Using numsum to sum a column of numbers.

if you, like me, do not have the numsum, this way can do the same.

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"

From Vim, run current buffer in python

Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions - (Open)solaris version with RBAC

Find usb device in realtime

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

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