Commands using exit

Will check if the given module is installed in the @INC. It will print the path and return 0 if found, or 1 otherwise.

Based on script from SharpyWarpy in http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/how-to-list-all-installed-perl-modules-216603/

Use this the next time you need to come up with a reasonably random bitstring, like for a WPA/WPA2 PSK or something. Takes a continuous stream of bytes coming from /dev/urandom, runs it through od(1), picking a random field ($0 and $1 excluded) from a random line and then prints it.

Using a standard way to handle error message and return code.

In a script, exit with quoted error message and status 1 if no arguments were supplied.

This is a command to be used inside of MS-DOS batch files to check existence of commands as preconditions before actual batch processing can be started. If the command is found, batch script continues execution. If not, a message is printed on screen, script then waits for user pressing a key and exits.

An error message of the command itself is suppressed for clarity purpose.

If you use new features of a certain Bash version in your shell script, make sure that it actually runs with the required version.

This script compares the modification date of /var/lib/dpkg/info/${package}.list and all the files mentioned there.

It could be wrong on noatime partitions.

Here is non-oneliner:

#!/bin/sh

package=$1;

list=/var/lib/dpkg/info/${package}.list;

inst=$(stat "$list" -c %X);

cat $list |

(

while read file; do

if [ -f "$file" ]; then

acc=$(stat "$file" -c %X);

if [ $inst -lt $acc ]; then

echo used $file

exit 0

fi;

fi;

done

exit 1

)

I have this as a file called deletekey in my ~/bin.

Makes life a little easier.

This function does a batch edition of all OOO3 Writer files in current directory. It uses sed to search a FOO pattern into body text of each file, then replace it to foo pattern (only the first match) . I did it because I've some hundreds of OOO3 Writer files where I did need to edit one word in each ones and open up each file in OOO3 gui wasn't an option. Usage: bsro3 FOO foo

Looks up a word on merriam-webster.com, does a screen scrape for the FIRST audio pronunciation and plays it.

USAGE: Put this one-liner into a shell script (e.g., ~/bin/pronounce) and run it from the command line giving it the word to say:

If the word isn't found in merriam-webster, no audio is played and the script returns an error value. However, M-W is a fairly complete dictionary (better than howjsay.com which won't let you hear how to pronounce naughty words).

ASSUMPTIONS: GNU's sed (which supports -r for extended regular expressions) and Linux's aplay. Aplay can be replaced by any program that can play .WAV files from stdin.

KNOWN BUGS: only the FIRST pronunciation is played, which is problematic if you wanted a particular form (plural, adjectival, etc) of the word. For example, if you run this:

you'll hear a voice saying "onomatopoeia".

Playing the correct form of the word is possible, but doing so might make the screen scraper even more fragile than it already is. (The slightest change to the format of m-w.com could break it).

For debian likes, that's in python-xml package.

Exit with error if script is not run in a terminal

If your script needs to be run in a terminal, this line at the top will stop it running if you absent-mindedly double-click the icon, perhaps intending to edit it. (Of course this won't help with scripts that run in the background.)

Cleanly create tempfiles using mktemp and remove them using traps instead of removing them in the end of the script. This way, you make sure the tempfiles are removed properly even if the script is killed or interrupted.

For a user script in KDE4, you can set TMPROOT using :