Commands using file sorted by votes

Commands using file (166)

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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
Write in a text file the contents of all the zip files in a directory.

It can be used to create an index of a backup directory or to find some file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in *.zip; do unzip -l "$file" >> archiveindex.txt ; done;

chon8a · 2013-05-02 01:43:26 7
Reset the last modified time for each file in a git repo to its last commit time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in $( git ls-files ); do echo $file; touch -t $(git --no-pager log --date=local -1 --format="%ct" $file | php -r 'echo @date( "YmdHi.s", trim( file_get_contents( "php://stdin" ) ) );') $file; done

westonruter · 2015-07-01 00:28:06 13
stores the number of lines of "file" in a variable to use in a loop
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

count=`wc -l file | cut -d ' ' -f1`

vmplacco · 2009-02-25 21:21:47 5
convert all WAVs from any format (MS ADPCM) to PCM

I needed this for wine.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

for file in $(find -type f -iname "*wav"); do mv $file "$file"_orig.WAV; mplayer -ao pcm "$file"_orig.WAV -ao pcm:file=$file; done

oernii · 2009-04-06 21:36:04 6
determine if a shared library is compiled as 32bit or 64bit

file displays a files type the -L flag means follow sym-links (as libraries are often sym-linked to another this behavior is likely preferred) more complex behavior (*two* grep commands!) could be used to determine if the file is or is not a shared library.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

file -L <library> | grep -q '64-bit' && echo 'library is 64 bit' || echo 'library is 32 bit'

infinull · 2010-03-07 06:31:35 3
Recursive and alphabetical orderly cp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

for file in `find *| sort -n | sed 's% %?%g'`; do echo "${file//?/ }"; cp --parents "${file//?/ }" /destinity_folder/ ;done

juanmi · 2011-05-23 16:34:08 7
Remove blank lines from a file and save output to new file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

sed '/^$/d' file >newfile

haplo · 2009-09-24 19:22:49 5
download file1 file2 file3 file4 .... file 100

With counter format [001, 002, ..., 999] , nice with pictures or wallpapers collections.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

for file in $(seq -f '%03.f' 1 $TOTAL ); do echo "($file/$TOTAL)"; curl -f -O http://domain.com/Name_$file.ext; done

nordri · 2010-01-12 15:23:44 6
a find and replace within text-based files, for batch text replacement, not using perl
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

for file in `find . -iname "FILENAME"`; do cat $file | sed "s/SEARCH_STRING/REPLACE_STRING/" > $file.tmp; mv $file.tmp $file; done

unixmonkey6754 · 2010-02-24 13:46:29 3
Numerate files, rename files in a directory by incremental number

Renames files in a directory to incremental numbers, following alphabetic order. The command does not maintain extensions.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

declare -i i; i=0; for file in *; do i=`expr $i+1`; mv "$file" $i; done;

themiurgo · 2010-08-26 12:24:38 5
Numerate files, rename files in a directory by incremental number
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

declare -i i=0 ; for file in * ; do i=$[$i+1] ; mv "$file" $i; done

pepin · 2010-08-26 12:40:58 3
list with full path
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

for file in *; do echo $PWD/$file; done

Velenux · 2011-12-16 13:12:00 4
remove all dead symbolic links in a directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

for i in $(file * | grep broken | cut -d : -f 1); do rm $i; done

Znuff · 2010-11-02 16:10:42 10
list with full path

Also lists hidden files, current dir and topdir.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

for file in * .*; do echo $PWD/$file; done

marek158 · 2011-12-16 13:42:07 3
Find broken symlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

find . -type l | xargs file | grep broken

kineticrick · 2011-04-07 22:58:02 4
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Reset terminal that has been buggered by binary input or similar

Simple Comment an entire file

With this simple sed command we can easily comment and entire file.

delete multiple files with spaces in filenames (with confirmation)

ls -Q will show the filenames in quotes. xargs -p rm will print all the filenames piped from ls -Q and ask for confirmation before deleting the files. without the -Q switch, if we have spaces in names, then the files won't be deleted.

Find writable files

Have a grudge against someone on your network? Do a "find -writable" in their directory and see what you can vandalize! But seriously, this is really useful to check the files in your own home directory to make sure they can't inadvertently be changed by someone else's wayward script.

Detect encoding of a text file

This command gives you the charset of a text file, which would be handy if you have no idea of the encoding.

File rotation without rename command

Rotates log files with "gz"-extension in a directory for 7 days and enumerates the number in file name. i.e.: logfile.1.gz > logfile.2.gz I needed this line due to the limitations on AIX Unix systems which do not ship with the rename command.

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance

You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

easily strace all your apache processes

This version also attaches to new processes forked by the parent apache process. That way you can trace all current and *future* apache processes.

TCP and UDP listening sockets

This command show listening sockets TCP and UDP. Useful for stop unwanted services from linux.

cooking a list of numbers for calculation

When you've got a list of numbers each on its row, the ECHO command puts them on a simple line, separated by space. You can then substitute the spaces with an operator. Finally, pipe it to the BC program.

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Commands using file (166)

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