Commands using sed (1,319)

  • reverse order of file


    4
    sed '1!G;h;$!d'
    grep · 2009-02-16 21:05:54 24
  • list all executables in your path

    If run in bash, this will display all executables that are in your current $PATH Show Sample Output


    4
    ls `echo $PATH | sed 's/:/ /g'`
    archlich · 2009-03-09 19:01:41 8
  • find an unused unprivileged TCP port

    Some commands (such as netcat) have a port option but how can you know which ports are unused? Show Sample Output


    4
    netstat -atn | awk ' /tcp/ {printf("%s\n",substr($4,index($4,":")+1,length($4) )) }' | sed -e "s/://g" | sort -rnu | awk '{array [$1] = $1} END {i=32768; again=1; while (again == 1) {if (array[i] == i) {i=i+1} else {print i; again=0}}}'
    mpb · 2009-03-27 20:38:43 8
  • output list of modifications for an svn revision

    url can be a working copy or url to a svn repository, revision is any valid revision number for that branch. Show Sample Output


    4
    svn log $url -r $revision -v | egrep " [RAMD] \/" | sed s/^.....//
    nitehawk · 2009-04-27 19:50:06 8
  • show installed but unused linux headers, image, or modules

    will show: installed linux headers, image, or modules: /^ii/!d avoiding current kernel: /'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d only application names: s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/ avoiding stuff without a version number: /[0-9]/!d Show Sample Output


    4
    dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d'
    plasticdoc · 2009-06-19 10:23:38 8
  • find external links in all html files in a directory list

    Just a handy way to get all the unique links from inside all the html files inside a directory. Can be handy on scripts etc. Show Sample Output


    4
    find . -name '*.html' -print0| xargs -0 -L1 cat |sed "s/[\"\<\>' \t\(\);]/\n/g" |grep "http://" |sort -u
    jamespitt · 2009-07-14 07:00:15 10
  • Simple XML tag extract with sed

    Limited, but useful construct to extract text embedded in XML tags. This will only work if bar is all on one line. If nobody posts an alternative for the multiline sed version, I'll figure it out later...


    4
    sed -n 's/.*<foo>\([^<]*\)<\/foo>.*/\1/p'
    recursiverse · 2009-07-23 07:59:30 3
  • How much RAM is Apache using?

    Display the amount of memory used by all the httpd processes. Great in case you are being Slashdoted!


    4
    ps -o rss -C httpd | tail -n +2 | (sed 's/^/x+=/'; echo x) | bc
    ricardoarguello · 2009-07-31 15:15:08 9
  • Create AUTH PLAIN string to test SMTP AUTH session

    I use this as an alias: alias authplain "printf '\!:1\0\!:1\0\!:2' | mmencode | tr -d '\n' | sed 's/^/AUTH PLAIN /'" then.. # authplain someuser@somedomain.com secretpassword AUTH PLAIN c29tZXVzZXJAc29tZWRvbWFpbi5jb20Ac29tZXVzZXJAc29tZWRvbWFpbi5jb20Ac2VjcmV0cGFzc3dvcmQ= # Show Sample Output


    4
    printf '\!:1\0\!:1\0\!:2' | mmencode | tr -d '\n' | sed 's/^/AUTH PLAIN /'
    vwal · 2009-08-04 05:04:50 4
  • Get your internal IP address and nothing but your internal IP address

    Will return your internal IP address. Show Sample Output


    4
    ifconfig $devices | grep "inet addr" | sed 's/.*inet addr:\([0-9\.]*\).*/\1/g'
    matthewbauer · 2009-08-06 21:43:22 3
  • Define an alias with a correct completion

    In Bash, when defining an alias, one usually loses the completion related to the function used in that alias (that completion is usually defined in /etc/bash_completion using the complete builtin). It's easy to reuse the work done for that completion in order to have smart completion for our alias. That's what is done by this command line (that's only an example but it may be very easy to reuse). Note 1 : You can use given command line in a loop "for old in apt-get apt-cache" if you want to define aliases like that for many commands. Note 2 : You can put the output of the command directly in your .bashrc file (after the ". /etc/bash_completion") to always have the alias and its completion Show Sample Output


    4
    old='apt-get'; new="su-${old}"; command="sudo ${old}"; alias "${new}=${command}"; $( complete | sed -n "s/${old}$/${new}/p" ); alias ${new}; complete -p ${new}
    Josay · 2009-08-10 00:15:05 4
  • Create Encrypted WordPress MySQL Backup without any DB details, just the wp-config.php

    The coolest way I've found to backup a wordpress mysql database using encryption, and using local variables created directly from the wp-config.php file so that you don't have to type them- which would allow someone sniffing your terminal or viewing your shell history to see your info. I use a variation of this for my servers that have hundreds of wordpress installs and databases by using a find command for the wp-config.php file and passing that through xargs to my function. Show Sample Output


    4
    eval $(sed -n "s/^d[^D]*DB_\([NUPH]\)[ASO].*',[^']*'\([^']*\)'.*/_\1='\2'/p" wp-config.php) && mysqldump --opt --add-drop-table -u$_U -p$_P -h$_H $_N | gpg -er AskApache >`date +%m%d%y-%H%M.$_N.sqls`
    AskApache · 2009-08-18 07:03:08 7
  • Show current weather for any US city or zipcode

    Scrape the National Weather Service Show Sample Output


    4
    weather() { lynx -dump "http://mobile.weather.gov/port_zh.php?inputstring=$*" | sed 's/^ *//;/ror has occ/q;2h;/__/!{x;s/\n.*//;x;H;d};x;s/\n/ -- /;q';}
    zude · 2009-10-17 23:47:47 4
  • geoip lookup


    4
    geoip(){curl -s "http://www.geody.com/geoip.php?ip=${1}" | sed '/^IP:/!d;s/<[^>][^>]*>//g' ;}
    twfcc · 2009-10-19 05:48:07 17
  • Play random music from blip.fm


    4
    mpg123 `curl -s http://blip.fm/all | sed -e 's#"#\n#g' | grep mp3$ | xargs`
    torrid · 2009-11-07 14:48:01 7
  • Print trending topics on Twitter


    4
    curl --silent search.twitter.com | sed -n '/div id=\"hot\"/,/div/p' | awk -F\> '{print $2}' | awk -F\< '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'
    allrightname · 2009-12-21 21:29:34 3
  • recursive search and replace old with new string, inside files

    xargs deals badly with special characters (such as space, ' and "). To see the problem try this: touch important_file touch 'not important_file' ls not* | xargs rm Parallel https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/ does not have this problem.


    4
    grep -rl oldstring . | parallel sed -i -e 's/oldstring/newstring/'
    unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 08:44:16 6
  • Mouse Tracking

    Will track your mouse and save it to a file. You can use gnuplot to graph it: gnuplot -persist <(echo "unset key;unset border;unset yzeroaxis;unset xtics;unset ytics;unset ztics;plot './mouse-tracking' with points lt 1 pt 6 ps variable")


    4
    while true; do xdotool getmouselocation | sed 's/x:\(.*\) y:\(.*\) screen:.*/\1, \2/' >> ./mouse-tracking; sleep 10; done
    matthewbauer · 2010-02-27 04:00:13 5
  • Convert files from DOS line endings to UNIX line endings

    Here "^M" is NOT "SHIFT+6" and "M". Type CTRL+V+M to get it instead. Its shortest and easy. And its sed!, which is available by default in all linux flavours.. no need to install extra tools like fromdos.


    4
    sed -i 's/^M//' file
    sata · 2010-03-25 19:34:08 7
  • Grab a list of MP3s out of Firefox's cache

    Ever gone to a site that has an MP3 embedded into a pesky flash player, but no download link? Well, this one-liner will yank the names of those tunes straight out of FF's cache in a nice, easy to read list. What you do with them after that is *ahem* no concern of mine. ;) Show Sample Output


    4
    for i in `ls ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/Cache`; do file $i | grep -i mpeg | awk '{print $1}' | sed s/.$//; done
    BoxingOctopus · 2010-04-11 23:14:18 7
  • remove empty lines


    4
    sed '/^$/d'
    er0k · 2010-04-18 00:52:00 5
  • embed referred images in HTML files

    in "a.html", find all images referred as relative URI in an HTML file by "src" attribute of "img" element, replace them with "data:" URI. This useful to create single HTML file holding all images in it, as a replacement of the IE-created .mht file format. The generated HTML works fine on every other browser except IE, as well as many HTML editors like kompozer, while the .mht format only works for IE, but not for every other browser. Compare to the KDE's own single-file-web-page format "war" format, which only opens correctly on KDE, the HTML file with "data:" URI is more universally supported. The above command have many bugs. My commandline-fu is too limited to fix them: 1. it assume all URLs are relative URIs, thus works in this case: <img src="images/logo.png"/> but does not work in this case: <img src="http://www.my_web_site.com/images/logo.png" /> This may not be a bug, as full URIs perhaps should be ignored in many use cases. 2. it only work for images whoes file name suffix is one of .jpg, .gif, .png, albeit images with .jpeg suffix and those without extension names at all are legal to HTML. 3. image file name is not allowed to contain "(" even though frequently used, as in "(copy of) my car.jpg". Besides, neither single nor double quotes are allowed. 4. There is infact a big flaw in this, file names are actually used as regular expression to be replaced with base64 encoded content. This cause the script to fail in many other cases. Example: 'D:\images\logo.png', where backward slash have different meaning in regular expression. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know any command that can do full text (no regular expression) replacement the way basic editors like gedit does. 5. The original a.html are not preserved, so a user should make a copy first in case things go wrong.


    4
    grep -ioE "(url\(|src=)['\"]?[^)'\"]*" a.html | grep -ioE "[^\"'(]*.(jpg|png|gif)" | while read l ; do sed -i "s>$l>data:image/${l/[^.]*./};base64,`openssl enc -base64 -in $l| tr -d '\n'`>" a.html ; done;
    zhangweiwu · 2010-05-05 14:07:51 13
  • Remove all unused kernels with apt-get

    This will remove all installed kernels on your debian based install, except the one you're currently using. From: http://tuxtweaks.com/2009/12/remove-old-kernels-in-ubuntu/comment-page-1/#comment-1590


    4
    dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge
    mitzip · 2010-06-10 20:33:32 5
  • Get Futurama quotations from slashdot.org servers


    4
    curl -Is slashdot.org | sed -n '5p' | sed 's/^X-//'
    noqqe · 2010-09-26 12:09:35 3
  • Upload folder to imageshack.us (forum)

    Each file in the current folder is uploaded to imageshack.us If the folder contains other filetypes change: for files in * to: for files in *.jpg (to upload ONLY .jpg files) Additionally you can try (results may vary): for files in *.jpg *.png The output URL is encased with BB image tags for use in a forum. Show Sample Output


    4
    imageshack() { for files in *; do curl -H Expect: -F fileupload="@$files" -F xml=yes -# "http://www.imageshack.us/index.php" | grep image_link | sed -e 's/<image_link>/[IMG]/g' -e 's/<\/image_link>/[\/IMG]/g'; done; }
    operatinghazard · 2010-10-01 06:50:04 6
  • ‹ First  < 5 6 7 8 9 >  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

Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

floating point operations in shell scripts
allows you to use floating point operations in shell scripts

Double your disk read performance in a single command
(WARN) This will absolutely not work on all systems, unless you're running large, high speed, hardware RAID arrays. For example, systems using Dell PERC 5/i SAS/SATA arrays. If you have a hardware RAID array, try it. It certainly wont hurt. You may be can test the speed disk with some large file in your system, before and after using this: $ time dd if=/tmp/disk.iso of=/dev/null bs=256k To know the value of block device parameter known as readahead. $ blockdev --getra /dev/sdb And set the a value 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, and maybe 16384... it really depends on the number of hard disks, their speed, your RAID controller, etc. (see sample)

Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.
The function will take a comma separated list of items to be 'selected' by xsel -i: $ smenu "First item to paste,Paste me #2,Third menu item" You will then be prompted to choose one of the menu items. After you choose, you will be able to paste the string by clicking the middle mouse button. The menu will keep prompting you to choose menu items until you break out with Control-C.

Make changes in any profile available immediately/Change to default group
Changes your group to the default group, has the same effect as sourcing your profile/rc file (in any shell) or logging out and back in again.

FAST Search and Replace for Strings in all Files in Directory
I needed a way to search all files in a web directory that contained a certain string, and replace that string with another string. In the example, I am searching for "askapache" and replacing that string with "htaccess". I wanted this to happen as a cron job, and it was important that this happened as fast as possible while at the same time not hogging the CPU since the machine is a server. So this script uses the nice command to run the sh shell with the command, which makes the whole thing run with priority 19, meaning it won't hog CPU processing. And the -P5 option to the xargs command means it will run 5 separate grep and sed processes simultaneously, so this is much much faster than running a single grep or sed. You may want to do -P0 which is unlimited if you aren't worried about too many processes or if you don't have to deal with process killers in the bg. Also, the -m1 command to grep means stop grepping this file for matches after the first match, which also saves time.

exit if another instance is running

Gets the X11 Screen resolution
Requires xrandr, grep and, sed.

show git commit history

list files recursively by size

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: