All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

FInd out what branches a specific commit belongs to
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

git branch --contains <commit sha1 id> | sed -e 's/^[ *]*//'

jimthunderbird · 2010-08-02 03:46:47 3
Switch to windows using gpicker

Require wmctrl and gpicker and an EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

wmctrl -i -a `wmctrl -l -x | gpicker -d "\n" -n "\n" - | awk '{print $1}'`

Iany · 2010-08-30 02:19:43 4
List of syscalls (for 32/64 bits systems)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

egrep '__NR_' /usr/include/asm/unistd_`getconf -a | awk '$1~/^WORD/{print $2}'`.h | sed -e 's/^#define __NR_//' | column -t

cicatriz · 2011-03-04 15:09:40 6

retrieve GMT time from websites ( generally accruate )

w3m is a commanline web browser, full of options, I used -dump_head for less unnecessary page download. With awk, I can retrieve dynamic changes in webpages in this very econnomical fashion Show Sample Output

-1

w3m -dump_head www.fiat.com | awk '/Date+/{print $6, $7}'

m33600 · 2009-06-08 00:06:01 7

intersection between two files

print members both in file1 and file2
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sort file1 file2 | uniq -d

emacs · 2010-05-28 10:25:31 6
Remove a line from a file using sed (useful for updating known SSH server keys when they change)

Easily removes line #2 in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

perl -p -i -e 's/.*\n//g if $.==2' ~/.ssh/known_hosts

meappy · 2012-01-17 14:11:03 3
List OSX applications and versions.

Uses find, plutil and xpath. Note: Some applications don't have proper information. system_profiler might be better to use. It's a bit slow query. Due to command length limit, I removed -name "*.app" and CFBundleName. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
/Applications/CheatSheet.app
v1.0.3
/Applications/Chess.app
v3.0
```
-1

find /Applications -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec sh -c 'echo "{}"; (plutil -convert xml1 -o - "{}/Contents/Info.plist" | xpath /dev/stdin "concat(\"v\", /plist/dict/string[preceding-sibling::key[1]=\"CFBundleShortVersionString\"]/node())" 2>/dev/null)' \;

darkfader · 2013-03-29 14:01:23 4
Compare a remote file with a local file

Or, if you have restricted access for sftp only, I think you can still do this: diff /path/to/localfile <(scp user@host:/path/to/remotefile >(cat))
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

diff /path/to/localfile <(ssh user@host cat /path/to/remotefile)

mc0e · 2013-05-24 09:24:31 8
Add cover-art to mp3 tags
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

eyeD3 --add-image=coverart.jpg:FRONT_COVER musicfile.mp3

munter · 2013-08-17 22:35:54 8
get size of a file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

du -hs file-name

bharat · 2014-05-09 07:22:53 7
Get a text on a position on the file and store in a variable
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

TIMEUNIT=$(awk '/timescale/{print NR}' a)

arcege · 2009-10-28 12:12:37 3
Match a URL

don't have to be that complicated
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cho "(Something like http://foo.com/blah_blah)" | awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if($i~/^(http|ftp):\/\//)print $i}}'

unixmonkey7109 · 2009-11-28 03:31:41 6
Recursively remove .svn directories

man find: If no paths are given, the current directory is used. - Can anybody tell me why so many people are typing the dot?
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find -type d -name ".svn" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

tuxilicious · 2010-02-25 10:16:18 6
encode a text to url_encoded format
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

groovy -e 'println URLEncoder.encode("Some text")'

yababay · 2010-08-30 16:04:29 4
display mean response time of intermediates to a specified host

mtr is a network utility that combines traceroute and ping utility
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

mtr -c 50 -r example.com

ohe · 2015-08-05 07:18:52 10
command to display info about the core specified

Display information about the cores. * sudo apt-get install schedtool Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
PID     1: PRIO   0, POLICY N: SCHED_NORMAL  , NICE   0, AFFINITY 0x1
```
-1

schedtool 1

terminalhacker · 2009-08-06 08:42:03 3
Create .tar file on Mac OS X Leopard / Snow Leopard without ._* files

Using the COPYFILE_DISABLE=true environment variable you can prevent tar from adding any ._-files to your .tar-file on Mac OS X.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

COPYFILE_DISABLE=true tar cvf newTarFile.tar Directory/

alainkaa · 2010-07-01 09:36:48 3
Get full directory path of a script regardless of where it is run from

work for execute file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

dirname $(readlink -f ${BASH_SOURCE[0]})

unixyangg · 2011-12-02 16:10:38 3
Avoid using seq and pad numbers with leading zeros

zsh only I always hated resorting to using $(seq -w 1 99) to pad numbers. zsh provides a shortcut that couldn't be more intuitive. It also works in reverse {99..01} Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
001
002
...
998
999
```
-1

for i in {001..999}; print $i

karld · 2009-02-16 23:03:53 7
Random unsigned integer

Grab 4 bytes from www.random.org over ssl and format them as an integer
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

curl -s "https://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbyte?nbytes=4" | od -DAn

PhillipNordwall · 2010-11-09 18:26:24 4
find php files even without extension

needs grep what supports '--recursive' Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./CustomFields/add-avatars.php
./examples/example-widget.php
./examples/multiwidget.php
./examples/Recent_Comments.php
./examples/Recent_Posts.php
```
-1

grep -Ilr "<?php" .

mitry · 2011-10-23 05:11:53 3
Get your external IP address
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

html2text http://checkip.dyndns.org | grep -i 'Current IP Address:'|cut -c21-36

tkoopa · 2009-08-06 10:29:02 4
speak a chat log file while it's running

like #9295, but awkish instead of perlish
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tail -f LOGFILE | awk '{system("say \"" $0 "\"");}'

tamouse · 2011-09-16 06:20:06 9
tar the current directory wihtout the absolute path

should do the same as command #12875, just shorter.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tar -cf "../${PWD##*/}.tar" .

joedhon · 2013-11-06 11:15:38 9
Load multiple sql script in mysql

Be aware of using the --password argument as it will appear your password in plain text on the screen. You may use -p argument instead, it will prompt you to enter you password in hidden mode.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cat schema.sql data.sql test_data.sql | mysql -u user --password=pass dbname

tristan_ph · 2009-03-24 08:39:40 6
‹ First < 474 475 476 477 478 > 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 tar of directory structure only

The original suggestion did not work for me, when operating on folders located on an external mount (ie other than the root device) in Ubuntu. A variation using xargs does the trick.

Quickly add user accounts to the system and force a password change on first login

This command is a bit Linux specific, as --stdin doesn't exist for passwd on many Unix machines. Further, useradd is high level in most distributions and Unix derivatives except for the Debian family of distros, where adduser would be more appropriate. The last bit, with chage, will force the user to change their password on new login.

export iPad App list to txt file

This will generate the same output without changing the current directory, and filepath will be relative to the current directory. Note: it will (still) fail if your iTunes library is in a non-standard location.

Find the package that installed a command

Real full backup copy of /etc folder

Yes, rsync(1) supports local directories. And, should anything change, it's trivial to run the command again, and grab only the changes, instead of the full directory.

Find files with size over 100MB and output with better lay-out

Display a list of RPMs installed on a particular date

Find out which RPMs were installed on a particular date. These would (naturally) include update RPMs. This example shows searching for "Thu 05 Mar" (with grep). Alternatively, pipe it to less so you can search inside less (with less's neat text highlighting of the search term): rpm -qa --queryformat '%{installtime} \"%{vendor}\" %{name}-%{version}-%{release} %{installtime:date}\n' | less # (this example) search term: Thu 05 Mar

Find usb device

I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

List all symbolic links in current directory

why go through the hard way? use find with -type l

Lookup hostname for IP address

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