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

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"

Archive all SVN repositories in platform indepenent form
This command dumps all SVN repositories inside of folder "repMainPath" (not recursively) to the folder "dumpPath", where one dump file will be created for each SVN repository.

find and delete empty dirs, start in current working dir
A quick way to find and delete empty dirs, it starts in the current working directory. If you do find . -empty -type d you will see what could be removed, or to a test run.

pipe output of a command to your clipboard
In turn you can get the contents of your clipboard by typing xsel by itself with no arguments: $ xsel This command requires you to install the xsel utility which is free

Remove all mail in Postfix mail queue.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

make computer speaking to you :)
you can listen to your computer, but don't be carried away

Find ASCII files and extract IP addresses

Get a Bulleted List of SVN Commits By a User for a Specifc Day (Daily Work Log)
* Replace USERNAME with the desired svn username * Replace the first YYYY-MM-DD with the date you want to get the log (this starts at the midnight event that starts this date) * Replace the second YYYY-MM-DD with the date after you want to get the log (this will end the log scan on midnight of the previous day) Example, if I want the log for December 10, 2010, I would put {2010-12-10}:{2010-12-11}

Crash bash, in case you ever want to for whatever reason
This is a very hackish way to do it that I'm mainly just posting for fun, and I guess technically can more accurately be said to result in undefined behavior. What the command does is tell the shell to treat libpng like it's a shell plugin (which it's most certainly not) and attempt to install a "png_create_read" command from the library. It looks for the struct with the information about the command; since it's always the command name followed by "_struct", it'll look for a symbol called "png_create_read_struct". And it finds it, since this is the name of one of libpng's functions. But bash has no way to tell it's a function instead of a struct, so it goes ahead and parses the function's code as if it was command metadata. Inevitably, bash will attempt to dereference an invalid pointer or whatever, resulting in a segfault.

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: