Commands using file | commandlinefu.com

Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)
» commands using file

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation: Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands: To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner: Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed: Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Terminal - Commands using file - 138 results

find -L /proc/`ps aux | grep [f]lash | awk '{print $2}'`/fd/ | xargs file -L | grep Video | awk '{sub(/:/, ""); print $1}' | xargs vlc

2011-07-24 17:53:46

User: tuxcanfly

Functions: awk file find grep xargs

Up
Down

Play flash videos in VLC

If you used to do `vlc /tmp/Flash*`, but no longer can't, this is for you.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in *; do mv -v "$file" "$(sed 's/ //g' <(echo $file))"; done

2011-07-10 21:08:31

User: laebshade

Functions: file mv

Up
Down

Renames all files in the current directory such that the new file contains no space characters.

This is a better version, as it does no command piping, uses for instead of while loops, which allows for a list of files in the current working directory to be natively processed. It also uses the -v/verbose option with mv to let you know what the command is doing.

While the command does exactly the same in a better way, I would modify the sed option to replace spaces with underscores instead, or dashes.

Please note that you'll receive errors with this command as it tries to rename files that don't even have spaces.

This is an alternative to: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/8761/renames-all-files-in-the-current-directory-such-that-the-new-file-contains-no-space-characters.

fdupes -r -1 path | while read line; do j="0"; for file in ${line[*]}; do if [ "$j" == "0" ]; then j="1"; else ln -f ${line// .*/} $file; fi; done; done

2011-06-26 10:45:52

User: piti

Functions: file ln read

Up
Down

Replace duplicate files by hardlinks

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

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

2011-05-23 16:34:08

User: juanmi

Functions: cp echo file sed sort

-3

Up
Down

Recursive and alphabetical orderly cp

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

find . -type l | xargs file | grep broken

2011-04-07 22:58:02

User: kineticrick

Functions: file find grep xargs

Tags: find xargs symlinks

-9

Up
Down

Find broken symlinks

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

fdupes -r -1 path | while read line; do j="0"; for file in ${line[*]}; do if [ "$j" == "0" ]; then j="1"; else sudo ln -f ${line// .*/} $file; fi; done; done

2011-03-07 11:16:09

User: piti

Functions: file ln read sudo

-1

Up
Down

Replace duplicate files by hardlinks

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

rmall_but() { declare -A keep;for arg;do keep[${arg%/}]=1;done;for file in *;do [[ ${keep[$file]} ]] || rm -rf "$file";done; }

2011-02-05 14:38:54

User: RanyAlbeg

Functions: file rm

Up
Down

Using associative array to remove all files and directories under PWD except "$1", "$2", "$3",..."$n"

file -s /dev/sd*

2010-12-28 09:56:03

User: mhs

Functions: file

Tags: file devfs

Up
Down

Use file(1) to view device information

file(1) can print details about certain devices in the /dev/ directory (block devices in this example). This helped me to know at a glance the location and revision of my bootloader, UUIDs, filesystem status, which partitions were primaries / logicals, etc.. without running several commands.

See also:

file -s /dev/dm-* file -s /dev/cciss/*

etc..

for file in $(find ~/ -iname "*.mp3");do c=$(mp3info $file|grep Genre|cut -f 3 -d :|cut -f 2 -d " ");if [ -z "$c" ];then c="Uncategorized";fi;if [ ! -e $c ];then touch $c.m3u;fi;echo "$file">>$c.m3u;done

2010-12-13 20:43:05

User: dzup

Functions: cut echo file find grep touch

Up
Down

Create a simple playlist sort by Genre using mp3info

cat file | tr -d "\n"

2010-12-02 09:22:02

User: uzsolt

Functions: cat file tr

Tags: Text Processing

-1

Up
Down

Join lines

This command deletes the "newline" chars, so its output maybe unusable :)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

cat file | tr "\n" " "

2010-12-02 09:21:02

User: uzsolt

Functions: cat file tr

Tags: Text Processing

Up
Down

Join lines

It's works only when you replace '\n' to ONE character.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

tail -f file |xargs -IX printf "$(date -u)\t%s\n" X

2010-11-25 11:23:13

User: unefunge

Functions: file printf tail xargs

Tags: tail xargs date printf logging

Up
Down

Monitor a file with tail with timestamps added

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

tail -f file | awk '{now=strftime("%F %T%z\t");sub(/^/, now);print}'

2010-11-25 04:11:52

User: arcege

Functions: awk file tail

Tags: awk tail

Up
Down

Monitor a file with tail with timestamps added

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

tail -f file | while read line; do printf "$(date -u '+%F %T%z')\t$line\n"; done

2010-11-24 05:50:12

User: derekschrock

Functions: file printf read tail

Tags: tail date

Up
Down

Monitor a file with tail with timestamps added

Should be a bit more portable since echo -e/n and date's -Ins are not.

tail -f file | while read line; do echo -n $(date -u -Ins); echo -e "\t$line"; done

2010-11-19 10:01:57

User: hfs

Functions: date echo file read tail

Tags: tail date

Up
Down

Monitor a file with tail with timestamps added

This is useful when watching a log file that does not contain timestamps itself.

If the file already has content when starting the command, the first lines will have the "wrong" timestamp when the command was started and not when the lines were originally written.

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in $( vmrun list | grep 'vmx$' | sort ); do printf "% 40s %s M\n" $(echo "$( echo -n ${file}:\ ; grep memsize $file )" | sed -e 's/.*\///' -e 's/"//g' -e 's/memsize.=//'); done;

2010-11-19 06:14:11

User: linuxrawkstar

Functions: echo file grep printf sed sort

Tags: vmware

-1

Up
Down

get memory configuration (not consumption) for all running VMware virtual machines

So your boss wants to know how much memory has been assigned to each virtual machine running on your server... here's how to nab that information from the command line while logged in to that server

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

2010-11-02 16:10:42

User: Znuff

Functions: cut file grep rm

-6

Up
Down

remove all dead symbolic links in a directory

Comments (5) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in *.png; do mogrify -trim "$file"; done

2010-10-21 13:58:05

User: depesz

Functions: file

Tags: convert png trim

Up
Down

Trim png files in a folder

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in `ls *.png`; do convert -trim $file $file; done

2010-10-21 13:20:30

User: adrienhaxaire

Functions: file

Tags: convert png trim

Up
Down

Trim png files in a folder

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in `cat urls.txt`; do echo -n "$file " >> log.txt; curl --head $file >> log.txt ; done

2010-10-19 02:54:13

User: Glutnix

Functions: echo file

Tags: status log curl HEAD http files list download http_code url

-1

Up
Down

Get all the HTTP HEAD responses from a list of urls in a file

urls.txt should have a fully qualified url on each line

prefix with

rm log.txt;

to clear the log

change curl command to

curl --head $file | head -1 >> log.txt

to just get the http status

file /bin/* | msort -j -l -n-1 -n2 2> /dev/null

2010-10-05 00:37:33

User: b_t

Functions: file

Tags: sort msort

Up
Down

Sort on multiple dis-contiguous keys/fields (can even specify key number/field from the end)

Notes:

1) -n-1 means sort key is the last field

2) -l is important if each separate record is on a new line (usually so for text files)

3) -j tells msort not to create log file (msort.log) in the working directory

4) may need to install msort package.

5) msort does lot more. Check man msort

rd(){ while read a ;do printf "$a\n";sleep ${1-1};done ;} # usage: rd < file ; or ... | rd

2010-10-03 04:16:03

User: argv

Functions: file printf read sleep

Up
Down

scroll file one line at a time (w/only UNIX base utilities)

usage examples

ls largedir |rd

lynx -dump largewebsite.com |rd

rd < largelogfile

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

file=orig.ps; for i in $(seq `grep "Pages:" $file | sed 's/%%Pages: //g'`); do psselect $i $file $i\_$file; done

2010-09-24 19:44:32

User: damncool

Functions: file sed seq

-1

Up
Down

split a postscript file

splits a postscript file into multiple postscript files. for each page of the input file one output file will be generated. The files will be numbered for example 1_orig.ps 2_orig.ps ...

The psselect commad is part of the psutils package

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

for file in *.jpg; do convert "$file" -resize 800000@ -quality 80 "small.$file"; done

2010-09-13 19:06:14

User: grinob

Functions: file

Tags: xargs convert

Up
Down

resize all JPG images in folder and create new images (w/o overwriting)

Convert all jpegs in the current directory into ~1024*768 pixels and ~ 150 KBytes jpegs

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

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

2010-08-26 12:40:58

User: pepin

Functions: file mv

Tags: rename numerate

-6

Up
Down

Numerate files, rename files in a directory by incremental number

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

< 1 2 3 4 5 > Last ›