Commands using head (314)

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

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.

Simple word scramble
enlubtsqyuse $ cat /tmp/out subsequently

Erase DVD RW

convert a mp4 video file to mp3 audio file (multiple files)

Create a 5 MB blank file via a seek hole
Similar to the original, but is much faster since it only needs to write the last byte as zero. A diff on testfile and testfile.seek will return that they are the same.

Kill any process with one command using program name
This will kill all. e.g. killall firefox

Run entire shell script as root
Placing sudo in the shebang line of a shell script runs the entire thing as root. Useful for scripts designed to, e.g. automate system upgrades or package manager wrappers — makes prepending everything with sudo no longer necessary

Find the package that installed a command

Display BIOS Information
read the memory from C:0000 to F:FFFF without the need auf dmidecode

Print just line 4 from a textfile
Prints the 4th line and then quits. (Credit goes to flatcap in comments: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/6031/print-just-line-4-from-a-textfile#comment.)


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: