All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Monitor a log file, filling up all available space in the terminal window and preventing line wrap

This bash one-liner will let you watch the tail end of a log file in real time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n 4 "tail -n $(expr $(tput lines) - 4) /var/log/apache2/access.log | cut -c 1-$(tput cols)"

atw527 · 2013-12-03 23:45:25 9
df without line wrap on long FS name

To be OS independent you should try df -Pk first (Linux) and if it does not work (that's the ||) then use df -k (e.g. for Solaris, HP UX, AIX). To get the output in a single line, use the additional cat.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(df -Pk 2>/dev/null|| df -k) | cat

ffeldhaus · 2015-01-15 22:38:36 9
finds all bean ids in all xml files from the current folder

finds all xml files greps them for extracts the bean id sorts the ids creates a list of distinct entries, a unique list of bean ids Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
groupManager
groupPermissionsDelegate
groupPermissionsDelegate
handleResolver
hashRegistry
hazelcastCacheCompactor
hazelcastCacheConfigManager
```
0

find . -iname "*.xml" | xargs cat | grep '<bean[^>]\+id=' | sed 's/.*id="$[^"]\+$".*/\1/g' | sort | uniq -u

gruzilla · 2015-11-06 07:57:22 10
GRUB2: Set Imperial Death March as startup tune
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

echo "GRUB_INIT_TUNE=\"480 440 4 440 4 440 4 349 3 523 1 440 4 349 3 523 1 440 8 659 4 659 4 659 4 698 3 523 1 415 4 349 3 523 1 440 8\"" | sudo tee -a /etc/default/grub > /dev/null && sudo update-grub

EvilSupahFly · 2015-12-22 06:22:30 9
get processid of running process

alternative to pidof command Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
12345
```
0

processid =$(ps aux | grep 'ProcessName' | grep -v grep| awk '{print $2}')

aysadk · 2017-05-21 19:52:12 17
Disk Free with column and Fs and Size human readble
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

df -PhT

net0bsd · 2018-01-03 02:31:15 22
Add a newline to the end of a cpp file

Adds a newline to the end of all cpp files in the directory to avoid warnings from gcc compiler.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -iname "*.cpp" -exec perl -ni -e 'chomp; print "$_\n"' {} \;

grundprinzip · 2009-02-18 14:12:24 7
Monitor a file's size

Got a file you're generating and you want the size without typing in 'ls -l file' all the time? Use this instead. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
2380 messages
2396 messages
2401 messages
```
0

while [ 1 ]; do du /var/log/messages;sleep 60; done

savanik · 2009-10-09 17:22:19 3
Fetch the Gateway Ip Address

same thing without loop ;)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

/sbin/route -n | grep "^0\.0\.0\.0" | awk '{ print $2 }'

BorneBjoern · 2010-03-07 13:59:57 5
Converts uppercase chars in a string to lowercase

Another way to do it with slightly fewer characters. It doesn't work on Russian characters; please don't vote down because of that. :p It's very handy for those of us working in ascii :) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
string
```
0

echo StrinG | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z'

randy909 · 2010-08-12 15:42:56 3
Comment out all lines in a configuration file matching a regexp, creating a backup.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

mv -i something.conf{,~} && sed "/regexp/s/^/#/" < something.conf~ > something.conf

jasonjgw · 2010-11-18 00:10:45 4
replace one of the octates of an IP

the numbers in the ip address are represented in sed as \1\2\3\4. If I put \1\2\3$i, then I change the last number. So for example to change the second number I'll do \1$i\3\4. Regards, Kfir Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
10.0.0.3
```
0

i=3; echo 10.0.0.1 | sed "s/$[0-9]\{1,3\}\.$$[0-9]\{1,3\}\.$$[0-9]\{1,3\}\.$$[0-9]\{1,3\}$/\1\2\3$i/g"

kipibenkipod · 2011-04-27 14:08:02 3
Matched string reference in replacement text

Use matched data and some other as replacement data Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ echo "abcde" | sed 's/./& /g'
a b c d e 
```
0

echo "abcde" | sed 's/./& /g'

totti · 2011-08-26 16:54:26 7
Remove comments from files

as suggest in frans coment : '/^#[^!].*/d' -> remove if line begin with # except shebang #!/bin/bash 's/$.*[^!]$#.*[^}]/\1/' -> remove inline comments except shebang and ${variable#}
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

sed -i -e '/^#[^!].*/d' -e 's/$.*[^!]$#.*[^}]/\1/' <filename>

jlaunay · 2012-01-31 02:45:56 7
Continously show httpd's error log
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

while [ 1 ]; do tail /var/log/httpd/error_log; sleep 2; clear; done

wildtype · 2012-03-09 17:10:40 3
set desktop background to highest-rated image from Reddit /r/wallpapers

Doesn't depend on curl and doesn't use thumbnails as wallpaper (which has the unfortunate effect of only allowing imgur links)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

wget -O - http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers.rss | grep -Eo 'http://i.imgur.com[^&]+jpg' | head -1 | xargs wget -O background.jpg

untitaker · 2012-04-25 11:15:26 4
Sort using kth column using : delimiter

Sort using kth column using : delimiter
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

sort -t: -k 2 names.txt

ankush108 · 2012-06-26 19:15:30 3
Kill a lot of process once a time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ps aux | grep <process> | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -i -t kill -9 {}

szimbaro · 2013-02-27 12:33:30 4
Comment in line
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

: "comment in line"

nhashimoto · 2013-04-21 08:01:50 6
Recursively remove all files in a CVS directory

This command removes and then cvs removes all files in the current directory recursively.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type f ! -path \*CVS\* -exec rm {} \; -exec cvs remove {} \;

jasonsydes · 2013-06-28 20:17:40 6

I use it to verify if readline support was specified at compile time. Show Sample Output

ruby -r rbconfig -e 'puts RbConfig::CONFIG["configure_args"]'

gdelfino · 2013-12-04 10:21:35 7

Change IP on an ESX interface
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

esxcli network ip interface ipv4 set -i vmk1 -I 10.27.51.143 -N 255.255.255.0 -t static

PROJAK_SX · 2014-03-01 20:05:08 8
Use youtube-dl to download video with output Youtube Title

Before you use this command you want to replace everything after the "https:" with the url of the video which you want to download. This string and it's switches will use "youtube-dl" to download the Youtube url into the directory/folder where it is called from. It will output the video using the same name as Youtube uses.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

youtube-dl -c -o "%(title)s" -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qSCKUCjdKg

tg0000 · 2014-06-12 23:31:55 11
Japanese shift-jis encoded subtitles in mplayer

Japanese subtitles are often encoded in shift-jis instead of utf-8, this avoids 文字化け when watching.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

mplayer video.mp4 -fontconfig -font 'Kochi Mincho' -sub 'video.srt' -subcp shift-jis

ephesus · 2015-01-16 00:08:43 8
Convert pdf to pure text.

Install pdfbox. http://pdfbox.apache.org Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Convert pdf to text, perfectly.
```
0

java -jar pdfbox-app-2.0.6.jar ExtractText input.pdf

allenkons · 2017-05-22 20:38:48 17
‹ First < 396 397 398 399 400 > 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

View Processeses like a fu, fu

I don't truly enjoy many commands more than this one, which I alias to be ps1.. Cool to be able to see the heirarchy and makes it clearer what need to be killed, and whats really going on.

Google Spell Checker

I took matthewbauer's cool one-liner and rewrote it as a shell function that returns all the suggestions or outputs "OK" if it doesn't find anything wrong. It should work on ksh, zsh, and bash. Users that don't have tee can leave that part off like this: $spellcheck(){ typeset y=$@;curl -sd "$y" https://google.com/tbproxy/spell|sed -n '/s="[1-9]"/{s/]*>/ /g;s/\t/ /g;s/ *$.*$/Suggestions: \1\n/g;p}';}

Runs previous command replacing foo by bar every time that foo appears

To replace foo by bar, but not execute, do ^foo^bar^:p To replace all foo by bar, but not execute, do ^foo^bar^:&:p

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"

Get a funny one-liner from www.onelinerz.net

Put this command in .bashrc and every time you open a new terminal a random quote will be downloaded and printed from onelinerz.net. By altering the URL in the w3m statement you can change the output: 1 to 10 lines - http://www.onelinerz.net/random-one-liners/(number)/ 20 newest lines - http://www.onelinerz.net/latest-one-liners/ Top 10 lines - http://www.onelinerz.net/top-100-funny-one-liners/ Top 10 lines are updated daily.

Discover the process start time

That is useful to discover the start time of process older than 1 day. You can also run: $ ls -ld /proc/PID That's returning the creation date of the proc files from the process. Some users reported that this way might show you a wrong date since any other process like cron, for example, could change this date.

Second pass dvd rip... The set of commands was too long, so I had to separate them into two.

This set of commands will rip a dvd title using a 2 pass mencoder xvid encode. It will provide a great quality rip. It will rip as close to 700MB as possible. (note the bitrate of -700000) Enjoy!

faster version of ls *

I know its not much but is very useful in time consuming scripts (cron, rc.d, etc).

Make vim open in tabs by default (save to .profile)

I always add this to my .profile rc so I can do things like: "vim *.c" and the files are opened in tabs.

Remove comments from files

Use sed to remove comments from a file. In this example the comments begin with #. The command '/^#/d' remove line starting with #. The command 's/#.*$//' remove comments at end of lines.

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