Commands using cat sorted by votes

Commands using cat (514)

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Automatd ssh public key setup without ssh-copy-id

Some servers don't have ssh-copy-id, this works in those cases. It will ask for the destination server, this can be IP, hostname, or user@hostname if different from current user. Ssh keygen will let you know if a pubkey already exists on your system and you can opt to not overwrite it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

echo 'Host or User@Host?:'; read newserver && ssh-keygen -N "" -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa ; ssh $newserver cat <~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ">>" ~/.ssh/authorized_keys ; ssh $newserver

alf · 2010-05-07 06:24:53 4
count how many cat processes are running
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -a |grep cat |wc -l

schmiddim · 2010-09-22 23:57:19 3
List your MACs address
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

cat `ls -r /sys/class/net/*/address` | sort -u

jaimerosario · 2011-06-02 23:16:37 3
Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

The first grep rejects capitalised words since the dict has proper nouns in it that you mightn't want to use. The second grep rejects words with ending in apostrophe s, and the third forces the words to be at least 15 characters long. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
counterproductive unreasonableness multimillionaires extemporaneously
```
-2

cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep -P ^[a-z].* | grep -v "'s$" | grep -Pv ^.\{1,15\}$ | shuf -n4 | tr '\n' ' ' | sed 's/$/\n/'

bugmenot · 2011-08-15 01:03:48 6
Cat files in a directory; for loop command

The better alternative to #9756. I don't think I'd ever use the original command, but this one was so bad I had to post this. Sorry. 1. $(ls) is dumb, and will give errors if you have an alias like "ls -Fs" 2. clear is better and more portable than reset state. 3. if you're interested in differences, then use diff, not cat.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for f in *; do clear; cat $f; sleep .3; done

toddkaufmann · 2011-11-25 17:10:47 6
Cat files in a directory; for loop command

Original submitted version would break if any filenames had whitespaces in them. The command is a Bad Idea anyhow, because you will end up `cat`ing a binary or something else specacularly bad.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in ./*; do cat "$file"; sleep 0.3

DopeGhoti · 2011-11-28 20:10:57 3
View external IP
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

wget -q ip.nu && cat index.html

VictorBjelkholm · 2012-03-23 03:14:37 3
Copy paste contents quickly and save as a file

Write script or commands in notepad/Editplus/MS word etc, copy the contents, type the above command and click on enter now, paste by right click-ing the mouse. Entire contents in the clip-board gets pasted now again click on Enter to go to new line/next line. Press Ctrl+D to close/save the file. Not always required to vi to create a new file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

cat > file_name

michaelrozar17 · 2012-03-27 11:38:09 4
download a list of urls
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

cat urls.txt | xargs -n1 curl -O --max-time 10 --retry 3 --retry-delay 1

kev · 2012-05-14 06:38:06 4
How to execute and encrypted and password-protected bash script?

echo "ls" > script.bash; This is my script, a simple 'ls'. gpg -c script.bash; Here I encrypt and passord-protect my script. This creates file script.bash.gpg. cat script.bash.gpg | gpg -d --no-mdc-warning | bash Here I open file script.bash.gpg, decrypt it and execute it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

echo "ls" > script.bash; gpg -c script.bash; cat script.bash.gpg | gpg -d --no-mdc-warning | bash

betsubetsu · 2013-03-10 09:34:12 9
List all password hashes
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

cat /etc/shadow

dsetton · 2014-02-01 19:48:05 6
having root on server, add user's public key to his keys (no password required)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

cat user_public_key.pub | ssh root@<host> "cat | su -c 'mkdir -m 700 -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys' <user>"

noisy · 2016-05-09 08:48:40 14
small CPU benchmark with PI, bc and time.

Broken in two parts, first get the number of cores with cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep proc|wc -l and create a integer sequence with that number (xargs seq), then have GNU parallel loop that many times over the given command. Cheers! Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
...
66983895228684783123552658213144957685726243344189303968642624341077\
3226978028073189154411010446823252716201052652272111660396

real	0m31,847s
user	0m59,085s
sys	0m0,151s
```
-2

time cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep proc|wc -l|xargs seq|parallel -N 0 echo "scale=4000\; a$1$\*4" '|' bc -l

kostis · 2018-12-06 05:15:24 674
Generrate Cryptographically Secure RANDOM PASSWORD

Change :alnum: to :graph: for all printable characters Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
FH170AB1DXb4dHlX
```
-2

cat /dev/urandom |tr -c -d '[:alnum:]'|head -c 16;echo

AndrewM · 2019-06-17 17:51:04 36
Broadcast message to all logged in terminal users.

Show message in file "welcome" to all logged in terminal users. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Broadcast Message from william@linux-wsue                                      
        (/dev/pts/0) at 12:05 ...                                              
                                                                               
Welcome to Command-line-fu
```
-3

cat welcome | wall

Williebee · 2009-02-14 18:12:50 12
Eliminate duplicate lines on a file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cat file1.txt | uniq > file2.txt

olafrv · 2009-03-01 05:10:10 11
Reset scrambled screen

^V means CTRL-V [ENTER] means ENTER key
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cat [ENTER]^V^O[ENTER]^D

minliu2k · 2009-04-17 13:16:56 13
View SuSE version

Displays SuSE release information Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 (x86_64)
VERSION = 9
PATCHLEVEL = 4
```
-3

cat /etc/SuSE-release

sharfah · 2009-05-20 17:28:12 20
CPU model
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cat /proc/cpuinfo

theIndianMaiden · 2009-08-19 11:09:17 13
Get a text on a position on the file and store in a variable with a specific separator
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

TIMEUNIT=$( cat a | grep -n "timescale" | awk -F ":" '{ print $1 } ' )

conradojr · 2009-10-27 18:01:26 3
Get your external IP address

bash neto..
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

exec 3<>/dev/tcp/whatismyip.com/80; echo -e "GET /automation/n09230945.asp HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: whatismyip.com\r\n" >&3; a=( $(cat <&3) ); echo ${a[${#a[*]}-1]};

yaccovs · 2009-11-03 21:57:00 6
Pipe music over netcat with mpg123

I think I picked this one up from Hak5 (yeah I know.. kinda lame)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

#Client# cat "The Meters - People Say.mp3" | nc -vv 192.168.1.100 8080; #Server# nc -vv -l -s 192.168.1.100 -p 8080 | mpg123 -v -

Abiden · 2010-01-30 08:50:17 7
Check whether laptop is running on battery or cable

Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charged
present rate:            0 mA
remaining capacity:      2000 mAh
present voltage:         16566 mV
```
-3

cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/state

adrruiz · 2010-06-13 23:00:54 4
Replace tabs with spaces in file

Replaces tabs in output with spaces. Uses perl since sed seems to work differently across platforms.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cat file_with_tabs.txt | perl -pe 's/\t/ /g'

nikc · 2010-07-11 13:01:22 37
close stderr
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cat aaaaaa 2>&-

totti · 2011-09-14 20:55:26 3
‹ First < 17 18 19 20 21 >

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Break lines after, for example 78 characters, but don't break within a word/string

Per default, linux/unix shells are configured with a width of 80 characters. If you like to edit a phrase or string on a line with more than 80 characters it might take long to go there (for example a line with 1000 characters and you like to edit the 98th word which is character 598-603). Maybe you might wish to use 78 characters, because if you forward the text via mail and the text will be quoted (2 extra characters at the beginning to the line "> "), you use 80 characters, otherwise 82, which are lame.

create new branch from stashed changes

from http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Stashing Useful for when stash cannot be applied to current branch

Get number of users on a minecraft server

I'm flat-out surprised that minecraft directory services require servers install multiple modifications to their server code, when the directories could fetch this information on their own.

Test how well a web server handles concurrent connections and big load.

This command will execute 1000 requests to the http URL http://127.0.0.1:8000 handlink 100 concurent connections at a time. Then it will display statistics about the time that have been taken.

Find the ratio between ram usage and swap usage.

it provides the ratio used for the RAM and The SWAP under Linux. When swappiness is high, Swap usage is high. When swappiness is low, Ram usage is high.

Find the package that installed a command

Steve Reich - Piano Phase; interpreter: Bourne-Again Shell.

The Piano Phase piece, by Steve Reich is a minimalist composition which is played on two pianos played at slightly different tempos, a task that's very difficult to accomplish by human players. The auditive effects produced by the cell displacement produce beautiful patterns. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Phase . My rendered version: https://ydor.org/SteveReich/piano_phase.mp3 Requires sox to be installed on the system. There are multiple videos on youtube showing different approaches and experiences to this interpretation. There is also a synthesized version. Even if Bash can behave as a powerful pianist, a simple threaded version leaves full room to several time glitches and even negative displacements, the same issues that human pianists experience when playing the piece. The older the computer, the better the chaos added to the result due to the CPU load. Apparently that's the reason Steve Reich composes pieces such as this. Without further ado, please give a warm welcome to the Bash minimalist player on synthesized two-threaded pianos. Please turn off your cellphones.

find an unused unprivileged TCP port

Not really better - just different ;) There's probably a really simple solution out there somewhere...

Compare two directory trees.

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Commands using cat (514)

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