Commands using awk (1,418)

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

Convert PDF to JPG
Without the bashisms and unnecessary sed dependency. Substitutions quoted so that filenames with whitespace will be handled correctly.

output absolute path of the present working directory
I've seen a lot of overly complicated attempts at figuring out "where am I?" I think this is a part of the problem: type -a pwd force the use of the binary version of `pwd` instead of the built-in with "/bin/pwd -P" -P option provides an absolute path to the present working directory for the overly cautious type: $(which pwd) -P

remove newlines from specific lines in a file using sed

Redirect STDIN
Several times, I find myself hitting my up arrow, and changing the search term. Unfortunately, I find myself wasting too much time typing: $ grep kernel /var/log/messages Redirecting STDIN allows me to put the search term at the end so I less cursor movement to change what I'm searching for: $ < /var/log/messages grep kernel If you're using the emacs keyboard binding, then after you press your up arrow, press CTRL+w to erase the word. If this has already been submitted, I couldn't find it with the search utility.

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"

Browse shared folder when you're the only Linux user
Under Ubuntu smbclient is part of the samba package. With the version I use (3.0.28a) cd-ing into folders with spaces in the name is a drag. You have to put the folder name in quotes: smb: \Shared\> cd "Marketing and PR"

Burn an ISO on the command line.

Get the full path of a bash script's Git repository head.
Rather than complicated and fragile paths relative to a script like "../../other", this command will retrieve the full path of the file's repository head. Safe with spaces in directory names. Works within a symlinked directory. Broken down: $cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" temporarily changes directories within this expansion. Double quoted "$(dirname" and ")" with unquoted ${BASH_SOURCE[0]} allows spaces in the path. $git rev-parse --show-toplevel gets the full path of the repository head of the current working directory, which was temporarily changed by the "cd".

Rename duplicates from MusicBrainz Picard
Renames duplicates from MusicBrainz Picard, so you get the latest copy and not a bunch of duplicates.

Grep for regular expression globally, list files and positions.
Grep for expression globally, list files and positions. "Hirn" is a nice german crib meaning "Brain". :-) Afterwards you can edit the line you want with "vi ./p_common/common_main.pbt +1550"


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: