Commands tagged alias (81)

  • Run the alias command, then issue ps aux | head and resize your terminal window (putty/console/hyperterm/xterm/etc) then issue the same command and you'll understand. ${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} Insructs the shell that if LINES is not set or null to use the output from `tput lines` ( ncurses based terminal access ) to get the number of lines in your terminal. But furthermore, in case that doesn't work either, it will default to using the deafault of 12 (-2 = 10). The default for HEAD is to output the first 10 lines, this alias changes the default to output the first x lines instead, where x is the number of lines currently displayed on your terminal - 2. The -2 is there so that the top line displayed is the command you ran that used HEAD, ie the prompt. Depending on whether your PS1 and/or PROMPT_COMMAND output more than 1 line (mine is 3) you will want to increase from -2. So with my prompt being the following, I need -7, or - 5 if I only want to display the commandline at the top. ( https://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt/ ) 275MB/748MB [7995:7993 - 0:186] 06:26:49 Thu Apr 08 [askapache@n1-backbone5:/dev/pts/0 +1] ~ In most shells the LINES variable is created automatically at login and updated when the terminal is resized (28 linux, 23/20 others for SIGWINCH) to contain the number of vertical lines that can fit in your terminal window. Because the alias doesn't hard-code the current LINES but relys on the $LINES variable, this is a dynamic alias that will always work on a tty device. Show Sample Output


    27
    alias head='head -n $((${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} - 2))'
    AskApache · 2010-04-08 22:37:06 14
  • If you have used bash for any scripting, you've used the date command alot. It's perfect for using as a way to create filename's dynamically within aliases,functions, and commands like below.. This is actually an update to my first alias, since a few commenters (below) had good observations on what was wrong with my first command. # creating a date-based ssh-key for askapache.github.com ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/`date +git-$USER@$HOSTNAME-%m-%d-%g` -C 'webmaster@askapache.com' # /home/gpl/.ssh/git-gplnet@askapache.github.com-04-22-10 # create a tar+gzip backup of the current directory tar -czf $(date +$HOME/.backups/%m-%d-%g-%R-`sed -u 's/\//#/g' <<< $PWD`.tgz) . # tar -czf /home/gpl/.backups/04-22-10-01:13-#home#gpl#.rr#src.tgz . I personally find myself having to reference date --help quite a bit as a result. So this nice alias saves me a lot of time. This is one bdash mofo. Works in sh and bash (posix), but will likely need to be changed for other shells due to the parameter substitution going on.. Just extend the sed command, I prefer sed to pretty much everything anyways.. but it's always preferable to put in the extra effort to go for as much builtin use as you can. Otherwise it's not a top one-liner, it's a lazyboy recliner. Here's the old version: alias dateh='date --help|sed "/^ *%%/,/^ *%Z/!d;s/ \+/ /g"|while read l;do date "+ %${l/% */}_${l/% */}_${l#* }";done|column -s_ -t' This trick from my [ http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html bash_profile ] Show Sample Output


    21
    alias dateh='date --help|sed -n "/^ *%%/,/^ *%Z/p"|while read l;do F=${l/% */}; date +%$F:"|'"'"'${F//%n/ }'"'"'|${l#* }";done|sed "s/\ *|\ */|/g" |column -s "|" -t'
    AskApache · 2010-04-21 01:22:18 16
  • A simple directive which disables all aliases and functions for the command immediately following it. Shortcut for the bash built-in 'command' - "command linefoo". Think, {sic}... Show Sample Output


    21
    \foo
    egreSS · 2011-09-23 11:00:35 10

  • 16
    type -all command
    marssi · 2009-05-27 02:57:32 10
  • Not a discovery but a useful one nontheless. In the above example date format is 'yyyymmdd'. For other possible formats see 'man date'. This command can be also very convenient when aliased to some meaningful name: alias mkdd='mkdir $(date +%Y%m%d)'


    11
    mkdir $(date +%Y%m%d)
    thebodzio · 2009-04-25 14:16:45 13
  • Makes it easy to add keys to new ppa sources entries in apt sources.list Now to add the key for the chromium-daily ppa: launchpadkey 4E5E17B5 Show Sample Output


    9
    alias launchpadkey="sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys"
    azeey · 2009-06-17 12:02:27 10
  • Put this in your ~/.bashrc file (or the equivalent) If you use vim a lot, this alias will be immediately obvious. Your brain will thank you.


    9
    alias ':q'='exit'
    tobiasboon · 2009-09-05 17:59:50 13
  • This is an alias you can add to your .bashrc file to get notified when a job you run in a terminal is done. example of use sleep 20; alert Source:http://www.webupd8.org/2010/07/get-notified-when-job-you-run-in.html


    9
    alias alert='notify-send -i /usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/apps/gnome-terminal.png "[$?] $(history|tail -n1|sed -e '\''s/^\s*[0-9]\+\s*//;s/;\s*alert$//'\'')"'
    pkiller · 2010-09-12 02:54:40 60
  • This is freaking sweet!!! Here is the full alias, (I didn't want to cause display problems on commandlinefu.com's homepage): alias tarred='( ( D=`builtin pwd`; F=$(date +$HOME/`sed "s,[/ ],#,g" <<< ${D/${HOME}/}`#-%F.tgz); S=$SECONDS; tar --ignore-failed-read --transform "s,^${D%/*},`date +${D%/*}.%F`,S" -czPf "$"F "$D" && logger -s "Tarred $D to $F in $(($SECONDS-$S)) seconds" ) & )' Creates a .tgz archive of whatever directory it is run from, in the background, detached from current shell so if you logout it will still complete. Also, you can run this as many times as you want, if the archive .tgz already exists, it just moves it to a numbered backup '--backup=numbered'. The coolest part of this is the transformation performed by tar and sed so that the archive file names are automatically created, and when you extract the archive file it is completely safe thanks to the transform command. If you archive lets say /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup/ it will create the archive /home/#home#tombdigger#new-stuff-to-backup#-2010-11-18.tgz Then when you extract it, like tar -xvzf #home#tombdigger#new-stuff-to-backup#-2010-11-18.tgz instead of overwriting an existing /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup/ directory, it will extract to /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup.2010-11-18/ Basically, the tar archive filename is the PWD with all '/' replaced with '#', and the date is appended to the name so that multiple archives are easily managed. This example saves all archives to your $HOME/archive-name.tgz, but I have a $BKDIR variable with my backup location for each shell user, so I just replaced HOME with BKDIR in the alias. So when I ran this in /opt/askapache/SOURCE/lockfile-progs-0.1.11/ the archive was created at /askapache-bk/#opt#askapache#SOURCE#lockfile-progs-0.1.11#-2010-11-18.tgz Upon completion, uses the universal logger tool to output its completion to syslog and stderr (printed to your terminal), just remove that part if you don't want it, or just remove the '-s ' option from logger to keep the logs only in syslog and not on your terminal. Here's how my syslog server recorded this.. 2010-11-18T00:44:13-05:00 gravedigger.askapache.com (127.0.0.5) [user] [notice] (logger:) Tarred /opt/askapache/SOURCE/lockfile-progs-0.1.11 to /askapache-bk/tarred/#opt#SOURCE#lockfile-progs-0.1.11#-2010-11-18.tgz in 4 seconds Caveats Really this is very robust and foolproof, the only issues I ever have with it (I've been using this for years on my web servers) is if you run it in a directory and then a file changes in that directory, you get a warning message and your archive might have a problem for the changed file. This happens when running this in a logs directory, a temp dir, etc.. That's the only issue I've ever had, really nothing more than a heads up. Advanced: This is a simple alias, and very useful as it works on basically every linux box with semi-current tar and GNU coreutils, bash, and sed.. But if you want to customize it or pass parameters (like a dir to backup instead of pwd), check out this function I use.. this is what I created the alias from BTW, replacing my aa_status function with logger, and adding $SECONDS runtime instead of using tar's --totals function tarred () { local GZIP='--fast' PWD=${1:-`pwd`} F=$(date +${BKDIR}/%m-%d-%g-%H%M-`sed -u 's/[\/\ ]/#/g' [[ ! -r "$PWD" ]] && echo "Bad permissions for $PWD" 1>&2 && return 2; ( ( tar --totals --ignore-failed-read --transform "s@^${PWD%/*}@`date +${PWD%/*}.%m-%d-%g`@S" -czPf $F $PWD && aa_status "Completed Tarp of $PWD to $F" ) & ) } #From my .bash_profile http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output


    8
    alias tarred='( ( D=`builtin pwd`; F=$(date +$HOME/`sed "s,[/ ],#,g" <<< ${D/${HOME}/}`#-%F.tgz); tar --ignore-failed-read --transform "s,^${D%/*},`date +${D%/*}.%F`,S" -czPf "$F" "$D" &>/dev/null ) & )'
    AskApache · 2010-11-18 06:24:34 2
  • When setting up a new aliases file, or having creating a new file.. About every time after editing an aliases file, I source it. This alias makes editing alias a bit easier and they are useful right away. Note if the source failed, it will not echo "aliases sourced". Sub in vi for your favorite editor, or alter for ksh, sh, etc.


    7
    alias va='vi ~/.aliases; source ~/.aliases && echo "aliases sourced"'
    greggster · 2011-03-10 06:41:37 5
  • This is a simple command, but extremely useful. It's a quick way to search the file names in the current directory for a substring. Normally people use "ls *term*" but that requires the stars and is not case insensitive. Color (for both ls and grep) is an added bonus.


    6
    alias lg='ls --color=always | grep --color=always -i'
    kFiddle · 2009-04-11 23:15:12 8

  • 5
    tmux attach || tmux new
    dirkr · 2012-12-03 07:06:05 8
  • In Bash, when defining an alias, one usually loses the completion related to the function used in that alias (that completion is usually defined in /etc/bash_completion using the complete builtin). It's easy to reuse the work done for that completion in order to have smart completion for our alias. That's what is done by this command line (that's only an example but it may be very easy to reuse). Note 1 : You can use given command line in a loop "for old in apt-get apt-cache" if you want to define aliases like that for many commands. Note 2 : You can put the output of the command directly in your .bashrc file (after the ". /etc/bash_completion") to always have the alias and its completion Show Sample Output


    4
    old='apt-get'; new="su-${old}"; command="sudo ${old}"; alias "${new}=${command}"; $( complete | sed -n "s/${old}$/${new}/p" ); alias ${new}; complete -p ${new}
    Josay · 2009-08-10 00:15:05 4
  • I use this alias in my bashrc. The --vi-keys option makes info use vi-like and less-like key bindings.


    4
    alias info='info --vi-keys'
    eightmillion · 2010-02-16 16:35:17 4
  • When debugging an ssh connection either to optimize your settings ie compression, ciphers, or more commonly for debugging an issue connecting, this alias comes in real handy as it's not easy to remember the '-o LogLevel=DEBUG3' argument, which adds a boost of debugging info not available with -vvv alone. Especially useful are the FD info, and the setup negotiation to create a cleaner, faster connection. Show Sample Output


    4
    alias sshv='ssh -vvv -o LogLevel=DEBUG3'
    AskApache · 2010-10-30 11:23:52 4
  • This form is used in patches, svn, git etc. And I've created an alias for it: alias diff='diff -Naur --strip-trailing-cr' The latter option is especially useful, when somebody in team works in Windows; could be also used in commands like svn diff --diff-cmd 'diff --strip-trailing-cr'... Show Sample Output


    4
    diff -Naur --strip-trailing-cr
    ruslan · 2011-02-10 14:32:42 3
  • I didn't come up with this myself, but I always add this to my .bash_aliases file. It's essentially the same idea as running "sudo !!" except it's much easier to type. (You can't just alias "sudo !!", it doesn't really work for reasons I don't understand.) "fc" is a shell built-in for editing and re-running previous commands. The -l flag tells it to display the line rather than edit it, and the -n command tells it to omit the line number. -1 tells it to print the previous line. For more detail: help fc


    4
    alias please='sudo $(fc -ln -1)'
    suspenderguy · 2018-06-13 20:20:19 198
  • This uses mpg123 to convert the files to wav before burning, but you can use mplayer or mencoder or ffmpeg or lame with the --decode option, or whatever you like.


    3
    alias burnaudiocd='mkdir ./temp && for i in *.[Mm][Pp]3;do mpg123 -w "./temp/${i%%.*}.wav" "$i";done;cdrecord -pad ./temp/* && rm -r ./temp'
    eightmillion · 2009-11-21 19:57:18 3
  • Once you get into advanced/optimized scripts, functions, or cli usage, you will use the sort command alot. The options are difficult to master/memorize however, and when you use sort commands as much as I do (some examples below), it's useful to have the help available with a simple alias. I love this alias as I never seem to remember all the options for sort, and I use sort like crazy (much better than uniq for example). # Sorts by file permissions find . -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %p\n' | sort -k1 -r -g -bS 20% 00761 drwxrw---x ./tmp 00755 drwxr-xr-x . 00701 drwx-----x ./askapache-m 00644 -rw-r--r-- ./.htaccess # Shows uniq history fast history 1000 | sed 's/^[0-9 ]*//' | sort -fubdS 50% exec bash -lxv export TERM=putty-256color Taken from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output


    3
    alias sorth='sort --help|sed -n "/^ *-[^-]/s/^ *\(-[^ ]* -[^ ]*\) *\(.*\)/\1:\2/p"|column -ts":"'
    AskApache · 2010-06-10 21:30:31 9
  • If a tmux session is already running attach it, otherwise create a new one. Useful if you often forget about running tmuxes (or just don't care)


    3
    alias ltmux="if tmux has; then tmux attach; else tmux new; fi"
    tensorpudding · 2010-07-19 01:27:47 5
  • Bash alias for easy irssi within screen, attempts to attach to existing irssi session, if one exists, otherwise creates one - Including wipe for when system reboots and leaves "dead" session.


    3
    alias irssi="screen -wipe; screen -A -U -x -R -S irssi irssi"
    djsmiley2k · 2010-12-15 09:10:53 3
  • sort is way slow by default. This tells sort to use a buffer equal to half of the available free memory. It also will use multiple process for the sort equal to the number of cpus on your machine (if greater than 1). For me, it is magnitudes faster. If you put this in your bash_profile or startup file, it will be set correctly when bash is started. sort -S1 --parallel=2 <(echo) &>/dev/null && alias sortfast='sort -S$(($(sed '\''/MemF/!d;s/[^0-9]*//g'\'' /proc/meminfo)/2048)) $([ `nproc` -gt 1 ]&&echo -n --parallel=`nproc`)' Alternative echo|sort -S10M --parallel=2 &>/dev/null && alias sortfast="command sort -S$(($(sed '/MemT/!d;s/[^0-9]*//g' /proc/meminfo)/1024-200)) --parallel=$(($(command grep -c ^proc /proc/cpuinfo)*2))" Show Sample Output


    3
    alias sortfast='sort -S$(($(sed '\''/MemF/!d;s/[^0-9]*//g'\'' /proc/meminfo)/2048)) $([ `nproc` -gt 1 ]&&echo -n --parallel=`nproc`)'
    AskApache · 2012-02-28 01:34:58 6
  • Quick and dirty hardware summary where lshw is not available. Requires util-linux, procps, pciutils, usbutils and net-tools, which should be preinstalled on most systems.


    3
    alias gethw='(printf "\nCPU\n\n"; lscpu; printf "\nMEMORY\n\n"; free -h; printf "\nDISKS\n\n"; lsblk; printf "\nPCI\n\n"; lspci; printf "\nUSB\n\n"; lsusb; printf "\nNETWORK\n\n"; ifconfig) | less'
    lordtoran · 2021-04-03 00:41:12 336
  • Adding this alias to ~/.bashrc or, better yet, the system-wide /etc/bash.bashrc (as in my setup) will make it possible to not only run pacman as any user without needing to prepend sudo but will also ensure that it always assumes that the user knows what he or she is doing. Not the best thing for large multi-user enterprise setups at all to say the least, but for home (desktop) use, this is a fantastic time-saver.


    3
    alias pacman=‘sudo pacman --noconfirm’
    realkstrawn93 · 2021-12-28 20:29:13 551

  • 2
    alias tproxy='ssh -ND 8118 user@server&; export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/libtsocks.so"'
    P17 · 2009-03-24 20:24:17 11
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