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 18

  • 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

Poor man's ntpdate
If you don't have netcat, you can use curl.

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

du with colored bar graph
i'm using gawk, you may get varying mileage with other varieties. You might want to change the / after du to say, /home/ or /var or something, otherwise this command might take quite some time to complete. Sorry it's so obsfucated, I had to turn a script into a one-liner under 255 characters for commandlinefu. Note: the bar ratio is relative, so the highest ratio of the total disk, "anchors" the rest of the graph. EDIT: the math was slightly wrong, fixed it. Also, made it compliant with older versions of df.

Generate soothing noise
Substitute 'brown' with 'pink' or 'white' according to your taste. I put this on my headphones when I'm working in an "open concept" office, where there are always three to five conversations going in earshot, or if I'm working somewhere it is "rude" of me to tell a person to turn off their cubicle radio.

Create a large test file (taking no space).

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Create a new file

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

Easy to extend one-liner for cron scripts that automate filesystem checking
This one-liner is for cron jobs that need to provide some basic information about a filesystem and the time it takes to complete the operation. You can swap out the di command for df or du if that's your thing. The |& redirections the stderr and stdout to the mail command. How to configure the variables. TOFSCK=/path/to/mount FSCKDEV=/dev/path/device or FSCKDEV=`grep $TOFSCK /proc/mounts | cut -f1 -d" "` MAILSUB="weekly file system check $TOFSCK "

Speed up upgrades for a debian/ubuntu based system.
Please install aria2c before you try the above command. On ubuntu the command to install aria2c would be: $sudo aptitude install aria2


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: