Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.


If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

World cup college
Hide

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:

Hide

News

2010-03-03 - Commandlinefu @ SXSW 2010
Am going to be at SXSW this year, in case you want to submit any CLI nuggets or suggestions to me in person. Ping me on the @codeinthehole Twitter account.
2009-09-12 - Email updates now available
You can now enable email updates to let you know each time you're command is commented on.
2009-07-11 - API and javascript blog widget now available
A simple API has been released, allowing commands to be retrieved in various formats. This also allows commands to be embedded on blogs/homepages.
2009-05-17 - Added duplicate suggestions to the new command form
When adding a new command, a quick background search is performed to make sure you're not duplicating a command already in the system.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Commands tagged automation

Commands tagged automation from sorted by
Terminal - Commands tagged automation - 3 results
wait
2010-01-15 04:03:11
User: bhepple
Functions: wait
0

If you really _must_ use a loop, this is better than parsing the output of 'ps':

PID=$! ;while kill -0 $PID &>/dev/null; do sleep 1; done

kill -0 $PID returns 0 if the process still exists; otherwise 1

while (ps -ef | grep [r]unning_program_name); do sleep 10; done; command_to_execute
2010-01-14 16:26:34
User: m_a_xim
Functions: grep ps sleep
-1

The '[r]' is to avoid grep from grepping itself. (interchange 'r' by the appropriate letter)

Here is an example that I use a lot (as root or halt will not work):

while (ps -ef | grep [w]get); do sleep 10; done; sleep 60; halt

I add the 'sleep 60' command just in case something went wrong; so that I have time to cancel.

Very useful if you are going to bed while downloading something and do not want your computer running all night.

xvkbd -xsendevent -text "Hello world"
2009-03-20 18:58:05
User: Alanceil
12

This is a (last resort) way to automate applications that provide no other ways for automation, it would send 'Hello world' to the currently active window. See the manpage (and the -text and -window entries) for how to send special characters and target specific windows.

An example:

Using xwininfo, I get the id of my XPlanet background window:

alanceil@kvirasim:19:51:0:~> xwininfo

xwininfo: Please select the window about which you

would like information by clicking the

mouse in that window.

xwininfo: Window id: 0x3600001 "Xplanet 1.2.0"

Absolute upper-left X: 0

(..etc..)

Now I use xvkbd to tell it to close itself:

xvkbd -xsendevent -window 0x3600001 -text "Q"

Obviously, the best way is to put these commands in a shellscript - just make sure to include a short sleep (sleep .1 should suffice) after each xvkbd call, or some programs will become confused.