Commands tagged function

This is useful for paging through long directories, mulitple directories, etc. I put this in my ~/.bash_aliases file and alias 'lsl' to it.

A shell function using perl to easily convert Unix-time to text.

Put in in your ~/.bashrc or equivalent.

Tested on Linux / Solaris Bourne, bash and zsh. using perl 5.6 and higher.

(Does not require GNU date like some other commands)

If you omit the function name, the command will display all definitions

If you issue the "set" command, you'll see a list of variables and functions. This command displays just those functions' names.

How often do you make a directory (or series of directories) and then change into it to do whatever? 99% of the time that is what I do.

This BASH function 'md' will make the directory path then immediately change to the new directory. By using the 'mkdir -p' switch, the intermediate directories are created as well if they do not exist.

Very useful in shell scripts because you can run a task nicely in the background using job-control and output progress until it completes.

Here's an example of how I use it in backup scripts to run gpg in the background to encrypt an archive file (which I create in this same way). $! is the process ID of the last run command, which is saved here as the variable PI, then sleeper is called with the process id of the gpg task (PI), and sleeper is also specified to output : instead of the default . every 3 seconds instead of the default 1. So a shorter version would be sleeper $!;

The wait is also used here, though it may not be needed on your system.

Previously to get around the $! not always being available, I would instead check for the existance of the process ID by checking if the directory /proc/$PID existed, but not everyone uses proc anymore. That version is currently the one at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html but I plan on upgrading to this new version soon.

I was looking for the fastest way to create a bunch of ansi escapes for use in echo -e commands throughout a lot of my shell scripts. This is what I came up with, and I actually stick that loop command in a function and then just call that at the beginning of my scripts to not clutter the environment with these escape codes, which can wreck havok on my terminal when I'm dumping the environment. More of a cool way to store escape ansi codes in an array. You can echo them like:

I usually just use with a function:

CC[15] has a background of bright green which is why it is separate. R resets everything, and X is my default font of bright white.

Those are just my favorite colors that I often use in my scripts. You can test which colors by running

See: http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html for more usage.

Type the command in the terminal and press enter to create the tweet() function. Then run as follows:

tweet MyTwitterAccount "My message goes here"

It will prompt you for password. Make sure that you use escape "\" character in message for showing varialbles or markup.

defines a handy function for quick calculations from cli.

once defined:

Chronic Bash function:

Note: use 'jobs' to list background tasks and fg/bg to take control of them.

Reduce the number of keystrokes it takes to open a file in vim. First of all, you just need to type "v", which is less than half the number of characters (!), and second-of-all, you only need to enter a substring of the file you want to open. For example, if you want to open the file, homework.txt, then type "v hom" to open it. Good tip is to use the lowest unique substring, otherwise you'll open multiple files in different buffers (which is sometimes desirable). Use Ctrl-^ to switch between buffers.