Commands using ls (517)

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Re-use the previous command output
The $(!!) will expand to the previous command output (by re-running the command), which becomes the parameter of the new command newcommand.

Have a random "cow" say a random thing
You need to have fortune and cowsay installed. It uses a subshell to list cow files in you cow directory (this folder is default for debian based systems, others might use another folder). you can add it to your .bashrc file to have it great you with something interesting every time you start a new session.

sed /pat/!d without using sed (no RE; limited to shell patterns aka globbing)
POSIX requires this "string truncating" functionality. might as well use it, at least for very small tasks where invoking sed and using RE is overkill.

Get all files of particular type (say, PDF) listed on some wegpage (say, example.com)
This example command fetches 'example.com' webpage and then fetches+saves all PDF files listed (linked to) on that webpage. [*Note: of course there are no PDFs on example.com. This is just an example]

Get the total length of all videos in the current dir in H:m:s
You're behind on your TV catch-up, but how far behind? This command tries to open mplayer against all files in the current dir. If it's a video file it will contain ID_LENGTH, which is summed and output in hours, minutes and seconds. Someone better at awk could probably reduce this down a lot.

Create a nifty overview of the hardware in your computer
After the command is done, open the html file in a browser

Factory reset your android device via commandline.

Search for commands from the command line
Search at CommandLineFu.com from your terminal. Get the clfu-seach at http://www.colivre.coop.br/Aurium/CLFUSearch

Mac OS-X-> copy and paste things to and from the clipboard from the shell
Copies whatever is piped to the pbcopy command to the clipboard. pbpaste ... well pastes whats on the clipboard.

du with colored bar graph
A more efficient way, with reversed order to put the focus in the big ones.


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