Commands using printf (206)

  • already described on the other two versions, this one uses ascii characters on game style to display elapsed time. Show Sample Output


    0
    export I=$(date +%s); watch -t -n 1 'T=$(date +%s);E=$(($T-$I));hours=$((E / 3600)) ; seconds=$((E % 3600)) ; minutes=$((seconds / 60)) ; seconds=$((seconds % 60)) ; echo $(printf "%02d:%02d:%02d" $hours $minutes $seconds) | toilet -f shadow'
    m33600 · 2009-10-23 07:56:30 10
  • In most modern shells, printf is a builtin command.


    0
    printf "%s\n" .*
    cfajohnson · 2009-11-23 18:07:18 3

  • 0
    Split() { SENT=${*} ; sentarry=( ${SENT} ) ; while [[ ${#sentarry[@]} -gt 0 ]] ; do printf "%s\n" "${sentarry[0]}" ; sentarry=( ${sentarry[@]:1} ) ; done ; }
    unixhome · 2010-02-09 20:32:56 3
  • I created this command to give me a quick overview of how many file types a directory, and all its subdirectories, contains. It works based off file extension, rather than file(1)'s magic output, because it ended up being more accurate and less confusing. Files that don't have an ext (README) are generally not important for me to want to count, but you're free to customize this fit your needs. Show Sample Output


    0
    printf "\n%25s%10sTOTAL\n" 'FILE TYPE' ' '; for ext in $(find . -iname \*.* | egrep -o '\.[^[:space:].]+$' | egrep -v '\.svn*' | sort -f | uniq -i); do count=$(find . -iname \*$ext | wc -l); printf "%25s%10s%d\n" $ext ' ' $count; done
    rkulla · 2010-04-16 21:12:11 3
  • first off, if you just want a random UUID, here's the actual command to use: uuidgen Your chances of finding a duplicate after running this nonstop for a year are about the same as being hit by a meteorite before finishing this sentence The reason for the command I have is that it's more provably unique than the one that uuidgen creates. uuidgen creates a random one by default, or an unencrypted one based on time and network address if you give it the -t option. Mine uses the mac address of the ethernet interface, the process id of the caller, and the system time down to nanosecond resolution, which is provably unique over all computers past, present, and future, subject to collisions in the cryptographic hash used, and the uniqueness of your mac address. Warning: feel free to experiment, but be warned that the stdin of the hash is binary data at that point, which may mess up your terminal if you don't pipe it into something. If it does mess up though, just type reset Show Sample Output


    0
    printf $(( echo "obase=16;$(echo $$$(date +%s%N))"|bc; ip link show|sed -n '/eth/ {N; p}'|grep -o -E '([[:xdigit:]]{1,2}:){5}[[:xdigit:]]{1,2}'|head -c 17 )|tr -d [:space:][:punct:] |sed 's/[[:xdigit:]]\{2\}/\\x&/g')|sha1sum|head -c 32; echo
    camocrazed · 2010-07-14 14:04:53 10
  • Prints movie length in H:MM:SS format with appropriate leading zeros. Show Sample Output


    0
    mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -identify movie.avi | awk '{FS="="}; /ID_LENGTH/{ H=int($2/3600); M=int(($2-H*3600)/60); S=int($2%60); printf "%d:%02d:%02d\n",H,M,S}'
    PNuts · 2010-10-13 14:51:41 4
  • function for .bash_aliases that prints a line of the character of your choice in the color of your choice across the terminal. Default character is "=", default color is white.


    0
    println() {echo -n -e "\e[038;05;${2:-255}m";printf "%$(tput cols)s"|sed "s/ /${1:-=}/g"}
    joedhon · 2011-01-09 18:08:18 3

  • 0
    MIN=10 && for i in $(seq $(($MIN*60)) -1 1); do printf "\r%02d:%02d:%02d" $((i/3600)) $(( (i/60)%60)) $((i%60)); sleep 1; done
    bugmenot · 2011-02-20 10:24:22 3
  • The exported TSV file of Google Adwords' first five columns are text, they usually should collapse into one cell, a multi-line text cell, but there is no guaranteed way to represent line-break within cells for .tsv file format, thus Google split it to 5 columns. The problem is, with 5 columns of text, there are hardly space to put additional fields while maintain printable output. This script collapses the first five columns of each row into one single multi-line text cell. new line character we use Line-Separator character (unicode U+2028), which is respected by gnumeric. It outputs a new .tsv file that opens in gnumeric.


    0
    awk -F $'\t' '{printf $1 LS $2 LS $3 LS $4 LS $5; for (i = 7; i < NF; i++) printf $i "\t"; printf "\n";}' LS=`env printf '\u2028'` 'Ad report.tsv'
    zhangweiwu · 2011-02-28 10:48:46 3
  • Among other things, this allows the sorting of comment descriptions and command lines retrieved as text from CommandLineFu.com. Show Sample Output


    0
    gawk 'BEGIN {RS="\n\n"; if (ARGV[1]=="-i"){IGNORECASE=1; ARGC=1}};{Text[NR]=$0};END {asort(Text);for (i=1;i<=NR;i++) printf "%s\n\n",Text[i] }' -i<Zip.txt
    IF_Rock · 2011-05-10 19:08:27 5
  • also works in vim


    0
    printf "g/^/m0\nw\nq"|ed $FILE
    till · 2011-05-27 08:57:31 4
  • WIDTHL=10 and WIDTHR=60 are setting the widths of the left and the right column/bar. BAR="12345678" etc. is used to create a 80 char long string of "="s. I didn't know any shorter way. If you want to pipe results into it, wrap the whole thing in ( ... ) I know that printing bar graphs can be done rather easily by other means. Here, I was looking for a Bash only variant. Show Sample Output


    0
    SCALE=3; WIDTHL=10; WIDTHR=60; BAR="12345678"; BAR="${BAR//?/==========}"; while read LEFT RIGHT rest ; do RIGHT=$((RIGHT/SCALE)); printf "%${WIDTHL}s: %-${WIDTHR}s\n" "${LEFT:0:$WIDTHL}" "|${BAR:0:$RIGHT}*"; done < dataset.dat
    andreasS · 2011-08-22 19:35:21 7

  • 0
    i=60;while [ $i -gt 0 ];do if [ $i -gt 9 ];then printf "\b\b$i";else printf "\b\b $i";fi;sleep 1;i=`expr $i - 1`;done
    barnesmjsa · 2011-09-08 18:14:48 3
  • I find it useful when I want to add another crontab entry and I need to specify the appropriate PATH. I give ''whichpath'' a list of programs that I use inside my script and it gives me the PATH I need to use for this script. ''whichpath'' uses associative array, therefore you should have Bash v4 in order to run it. See sample output. Show Sample Output


    0
    whichpath() { local -A path; local c p; for c; do p=$(type -P "$c"); p=${p%/*}; path[${p:-/}]=1; done; local IFS=:; printf '%s\n' "${!path[*]}"; }
    RanyAlbeg · 2011-09-16 15:55:15 20

  • 0
    find . -type f -exec awk '/linux/ { printf "%s %s: %s\n",FILENAME,NR,$0; }' {} \;
    Neo23x0 · 2011-11-29 12:32:06 8
  • Better awk example, using only mplayer, grep, cut, and awk. Show Sample Output


    0
    mplayer -endpos 0.1 -vo null -ao null -identify *.avi 2>&1 |grep ID_LENGTH |cut -d = -f 2|awk '{SUM += $1} END { printf "%d:%d:%d\n",SUM/3600,SUM%3600/60,SUM%60}'
    Coderjoe · 2011-12-12 15:49:07 3
  • Here's my version. It's a bit lengthy but I prefer it since it's all Bash.


    0
    genRandomText() { x=({a..z}); for(( i=0; i<$1; i++ )); do printf ${x[$((RANDOM%26))]}; done; printf "\n"; }
    uxseven · 2012-01-26 08:19:33 3
  • Improvement on Coderjoe's Solution. Gets rid of grep and cut (and implements them in awk) and specifies some different mplayer options that speed things up a bit. Show Sample Output


    0
    find /path/to/dir -iname "*.ext" -print0 | xargs -0 mplayer -really-quiet -cache 64 -vo dummy -ao dummy -identify 2>/dev/null | awk '/ID_LENGTH/{gsub(/ID_LENGTH=/,"")}{SUM += $1}END{ printf "%02d:%02d:%02d\n",SUM/3600,SUM%3600/60,SUM%60}'
    DarkSniper · 2012-03-11 12:28:48 3
  • proc lister usage: p proc killer usage: p patt [signal] uses only ps, grep, sed, printf and kill no need for pgrep/pkill (not part of early UNIX) _p(){ ps ax \ |grep $1 \ |sed ' /grep.'"$1"'/d' \ |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' '; printf "${a#* }" >&2; printf '\n'; done; } p(){ case $# in 0) ps ax |grep .|less -iE; ;; 1) _p $1; ;; [23]) _p $1 2>/dev/null \ |sed '/'"$2"'/!d; s,.*,kill -'"${3-15}"' &,'|sh -v ;; esac; } alas, can't get this under 255 chars. flatcap? Show Sample Output


    0
    _p(){ ps ax |grep $1 |sed '/grep.'"$1"'/d' |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' ';printf "${a#* }" >&2;printf '\n';done;}
    argv · 2012-04-01 19:45:17 3
  • proc lister usage: p proc killer usage: p patt [signal] uses only ps, grep, sed, printf and kill no need for pgrep/pkill (not part of early UNIX) _p(){ ps ax \ |grep $1 \ |sed ' /grep.'"$1"'/d' \ |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' '; printf "${a#* }" >&2; printf '\n'; done; } p(){ case $# in 0) ps ax |grep .|less -iE; ;; 1) _p $1; ;; [23]) _p $1 2>/dev/null \ |sed '/'"$2"'/!d; s,.*,kill -'"${3-15}"' &,'|sh -v ;; esac; } alas, can't get this under 255 chars. flatcap? Show Sample Output


    0
    _p(){ ps ax |grep $1 |sed '/grep.'"$1"'/d' |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' ';printf "${a#* }" >&2;printf '\n';done;}
    argv · 2012-04-01 19:46:19 5

  • 0
    yes "$(seq 232 255;seq 254 -1 233)" | while read i; do printf "\x1b[48;5;${i}m\n"; sleep .01; done
    hogofogo · 2012-04-03 06:41:43 4
  • Sometimes you want to see all of the systcls for a given $thing. I happened to need to easily look at all of the vm sysctls between two boxes and compare them. This is what I came up with. Show Sample Output


    0
    find /proc/sys/vm -maxdepth 1 -type f | while read i ; do printf "%-35s\t%s\n" "$i" "$(<$i)" ; done | sort -t/ -k4
    SEJeff · 2012-05-25 16:34:16 7
  • printf reapeats the format as longer as it has arguments. Then the idea is to make cut retain as much fields as we have elements in the array. As usual with such join/split string manipulation, you have to make sure you don't have conflicts between your separator and your array content.


    0
    printf "%s," "${LIST[@]}" | cut -d "," -f 1-${#LIST[@]}
    Valise · 2012-06-04 14:56:12 3
  • usage: alarmclock TIME TIME is a sleep(1) parameter which tells function how long to wait until raise the alarm.


    0
    alarmclock() { [ $1 ] || echo Parameter TIME is missing. 1>&2 && return 1 ; ( sleep $1 ; for x in 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ; do for y in `seq 0 $[ 10 - $x ] ` ; do printf "\a"; sleep 0.$x ; done ; done ) & }
    lkj · 2012-08-16 15:35:15 3
  • Could easily be used for lowercase --> ((i=97;i Show Sample Output


    0
    for ((i=65;i<91;i++)); do printf "\\$(printf '%03o' $i) "; done
    slappy · 2012-08-24 13:24:36 4
  • ‹ First  < 4 5 6 7 8 >  Last ›

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

Convert numbers to SI notation
converts any number on the 'stdin' to SI notation. My version limits to 3 digits of precious (working with 10% resistors).

find and grep Word docs
Find Word docs by filename in the current directory, convert each of them to plain text using antiword (taking care of spaces in filenames), then grep for a search term in the particular file. (Of course, it's better to save your data as plain text to make for easier grepping, but that's not always possible.) Requires antiword. Or you can modify it to use catdoc instead.

Find removed files still in use via /proc
Oracle DBA remove some logfiles which are still open by the database and he is complaining the space has not been reclaimed? Use the above command to find out what PID needs to be stopped. Or alternatively recover the file via: $ cp /proc/pid/fd/filehandle /new/file.txt

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server
Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

Generate list of words and their frequencies in a text file.

Dump and bz2compress a mysql db
To also move the db backup to another location you could pass the output to the dd command instead of a file $mysqldump -u user -h host -ppwd -B dbname | bzip2 -zc9 | dd ssh usr@server "dd of=db_dump"

Go get those photos from a Picasa album

Recursively chmod all dirs to 755 and all files to 644

how to export a table in .csv file
Exports the result of query in a csv file

Use lynx to run repeating website actions
This command will tell lynx to read keystrokes from the specified file - which can be used in a cronjob to auto-login on websites that give you points for logging in once a day *cough cough* (which is why I used -accept_all_cookies). For creating your keystroke file, use: $ lynx -cmd_log yourfile


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: