Commands using sed (1,319)

  • alternative using 'host' Show Sample Output


    -1
    host -t a dartsclink.com | sed 's/.*has address //'
    dartsclink · 2009-08-14 16:11:18 13
  • Do this with caution.


    -1
    for kern in $(grep "initrd " /boot/grub/grub.conf|grep -v ^#|cut -f 2- -d-|sed -e 's/\.img//g'); do mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-$kern.img $kern; done
    oernii2 · 2009-08-19 09:53:29 502
  • Reverse DNS lookups, from a file with list of IP's, here the file is called lookups.txt


    -1
    sed 's/\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\)\.\([0-9]*\).in-addr.arpa domain name pointer\(.*\)\./\4.\3.\2.\1\5/' \ lookups.txt
    hemanth · 2009-08-22 09:37:20 4

  • -1
    for dnsREC in $(curl -s http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters |grep -Eo ^[A-Z\.]+\ |sed 's/TYPE//'); do echo -n "$dnsREC " && dig +short $dnsREC IANA.ORG; done
    commandlinefu · 2009-09-01 03:11:18 3
  • search argument in PATH accept grep expressions without args, list all binaries found in PATH Show Sample Output


    -1
    function sepath { echo $PATH |tr ":" "\n" |sort -u |while read L ; do cd "$L" 2>/dev/null && find . \( ! -name . -prune \) \( -type f -o -type l \) 2>/dev/null |sed "s@^\./@@" |egrep -i "${*}" |sed "s@^@$L/@" ; done ; }
    mobidyc · 2009-09-11 15:03:22 5
  • Uses curl to download page of membership of US Congress. Use sed to strip HTML then perl to print a line starting with two tabs (a line with a representative) Show Sample Output


    -1
    curl "http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml" 2>/dev/null | sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//ba' | perl -nle 's/^\t\t(.*$)/ $1/ and print;'
    drewk · 2009-09-24 23:37:36 15
  • From Hong Kong Observatory wap site ;) Show Sample Output


    -1
    wget -q -O - 'http://wap.weather.gov.hk/' | sed -r 's/<[^>]+>//g;/^UV/q' | grep -v '^$'
    twfcc · 2009-09-25 02:21:05 6
  • "get Hong Kong weather infomation from HK Observatory From Hong Kong Observatory wap site ;)" other one showed alot of blank lines for me Show Sample Output


    -1
    wget -q -O - 'http://wap.weather.gov.hk/' | sed -r 's/<[^>]+>//g;/^UV/q' | tail -n4
    dakunesu · 2009-09-25 02:36:46 3
  • You'll run into trouble if you have files w/ missing newlines at the end. I tried to use PAGER='sed \$q' git blame and even PAGER='sed \$q' git -p blame to force a newline at the end, but as soon as the output is redirected, git seems to ignore the pager.


    -1
    git ls-files | while read i; do git blame $i | sed -e 's/^[^(]*(//' -e 's/^\([^[:digit:]]*\)[[:space:]]\+[[:digit:]].*/\1/'; done | sort | uniq -ic | sort -nr
    pipping · 2009-10-25 09:40:01 4

  • -1
    getdji (){local url sedcmd;url='http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=^DJI';sedcmd='/(DJI:.*)/,/Day.*/!d;s/^ *//g;';sedcmd="$sedcmd/Change:/s/Down / -/;/Change:/s/Up / +/;";sedcmd="$sedcmd/Open:/s//& /";lynx -dump "$url" | sed "$sedcmd"; }
    twfcc · 2009-10-26 09:00:18 5
  • Useful when you need to write e.g. an INSERT for a table with a large number of columns. This command will retrieve the column names and comma-separate them ready for INSERT INTO(...), removing the last comma.


    -1
    mysql -u <user> --password=<password> -e "SHOW COLUMNS FROM <table>" <database> | awk '{print $1}' | tr "\n" "," | sed 's/,$//g'
    maxmanders · 2009-10-29 13:42:17 3
  • This command uses the top voted "Get your external IP" command from commandlinefu.com to get your external IP address. Use this and you will always be using the communities favourite command. This is a tongue-in-cheek entry and not recommended for actual usage.


    -1
    eval $(curl -s http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/external/ZXh0ZXJuYWw=/sort-by-votes/plaintext|sed -n '/^# Get your external IP address$/{n;p;q}')
    jgc · 2009-11-04 16:58:31 6
  • same thing as the other


    -1
    ipcalc $(ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr:" | cut -d':' -f2,4 | sed 's/.+Bcast:/\//g') | awk '/Network/ { print $2 } '
    solarislackware · 2009-12-05 15:00:32 3

  • -1
    sed -e 's/{"url":/\n&/g' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/sessionstore.js | cut -d\" -f4
    cfajohnson · 2009-12-10 04:31:31 4
  • There's too many options to number, My curiosity has forced me to make it using only sed. Maybe useful... or not... :-S


    -1
    sed '/./=' infile | sed '/^/N; s/\n/ /'
    glaudiston · 2009-12-10 16:24:56 6
  • Print out contents of file with line numbers. This version will print a number for every line, and separates the numbering from the line with a tab. Show Sample Output


    -1
    sed = <file> | sed 'N;s/\n/\t/'
    jgc · 2009-12-11 14:39:14 3
  • I needed to add a line to my crontab from within a script and didn't want to have to write my own temporary file. You may find you need to reload the crond after this to make the change take effect. e.g.: if [ -x /sbin/service ] then /sbin/service crond reload else CRON_PID=`ps -furoot | awk '/[^a-z]cron(d)?$/{print $2}'` if [ -n "$CRON_PID" ] then kill -HUP $CRON_PID fi fi The reason I had CRON_HOUR and CRON_MINS instead of numbers is that I wanted to generate a random time between midnight & 6AM to run the job, which I did with: CRON_HOUR=`/usr/bin/perl -e 'printf "%02d\n", int(rand(6))'` CRON_MINS=`/usr/bin/perl -e 'printf "%02d\n", int(rand(60));'`


    -1
    crontab -l | sed -e '$G;$s-$-'"$CRON_MINS $CRON_HOUR"' * * * /usr/bin/command >/dev/null 2>&1-' | crontab -
    JohnGH · 2010-01-07 11:00:05 6
  • Combines a few repetitive tasks when compiling source code. Especially useful when a hypen in a file-name breaks tab completion. 1.) wget source.tar.gz 2.) tar xzvf source.tar.gz 3.) cd source 4.) ls From there you can run ./configure, make and etc. Show Sample Output


    -1
    wtzc () { wget "$@"; foo=`echo "$@" | sed 's:.*/::'`; tar xzvf $foo; blah=`echo $foo | sed 's:,*/::'`; bar=`echo $blah | sed -e 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/' -e 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'`; cd $bar; ls; }
    oshazard · 2010-01-17 11:25:47 3

  • -1
    watch -n 7 -d 'uptime | sed s/.*users?, //'
    matthewbauer · 2010-01-17 18:45:52 3

  • -1
    find . -maxdepth 1 -type f| xargs sha1sum | sed 's/^\(\w*\)\s*\(.*\)/\2 \1/' | while read LINE; do mv $LINE; done
    foremire · 2010-01-25 20:21:01 11
  • 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.


    -1
    ls -t1 | sed 1d | parallel -X rm
    unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 12:28:18 3
  • Will return temperature in Fahrenheit of a location (New York City in example). Uses a Google API. Show Sample Output


    -1
    curl -s "http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=New%20York" | sed 's|.*<temp_f data="\([^"]*\)"/>.*|\1|'
    matthewbauer · 2010-02-08 23:06:48 5
  • Get Google Reader unread count from the command line. You'll have to define your auth token with $auth Or use: curl -s -H "Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=$(curl -sd "Email=$email&Passwd=$password&service=reader" https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin | grep Auth | sed 's/Auth=\(.*\)/\1/')" "http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/unread-count?output=json" | tr '{' '\n' | sed 's/.*"count":\([0-9]*\),".*/\1/' | grep -E ^[0-9]+$ | tr '\n' '+' | sed 's/\(.*\)+/\1\n/' | bc Show Sample Output


    -1
    curl -s -H "Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=$auth" "http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/unread-count?output=json" | tr '{' '\n' | sed 's/.*"count":\([0-9]*\),".*/\1/' | grep -E ^[0-9]+$ | tr '\n' '+' | sed 's/\(.*\)+/\1\n/' | bc
    matthewbauer · 2010-02-11 00:42:57 7

  • -1
    sed 's/pattern/^[[1m&^[[0m/g'
    rmcb · 2010-02-12 14:05:34 3
  • You WILL have problems if the files have the same name. Use cases: consolidate music library and unify photos (especially if your camera separates images by dates). After running the command and verifying if there was no name issues, you can use ls -d */ | sed -e 's/^/\"/g' -e 's/$/\"/g' | xargs rm -r to remove now empty subdirectories.


    -1
    ls -d */* | sed -e 's/^/\"/g' -e 's/$/\"/g' | xargs mv -t $(pwd)
    leovailati · 2010-03-01 23:43:26 6
  • ‹ First  < 42 43 44 45 46 >  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

Stop Flash from tracking everything you do.
Brute force way to block all LSO cookies on a Linux system with the non-free Flash browser plugin. Works just fine for my needs. Enjoy.

Enter parameter if empty (script becomes interactive when parameters are missing)
Can be used for command line parameters too. If you have a more complicated way of entering values (validation, GUI, ...), then write a function i.e. EnterValue() that echoes the value and then you can write: $ param=${param:-$(EnterValue)}

Change user within ssh session retaining the current MIT cookie for X-forwarding
When you remotely log in like "ssh -X userA:host" and become a different user with "su UserB", X-forwarding will not work anymore since /home/UserB/.Xauthority does not exist. This will use UserA's information stored in .Xauthority for UserB to enable X-forwarding. Watch http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2008/04/05/respect-my-xauthority/ for details.

Cut out a piece of film from a file. Choose an arbitrary length and starting time.
With: -vcodec, you choose what video codec the new file should be encoded with. Run ffmpeg -formats E to list all available video and audio encoders and file formats. copy, you choose the video encoder that just copies the file. -acodec, you choose what audio codec the new file should be encoded with. copy, you choose the audio encoder that just copies the file. -i originalfile, you provide the filename of the original file to ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30, you choose the starting time on the original file in this case 1 min and 30 seconds into the film -t 0:0:20, you choose the length of the new film newfile, you choose the name of the file created. Here is more information of how to use ffmpeg: http://www.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html

Validating a file with checksum
Makes sure the contents of "myfile" are the same contents that the author intended given the author's md5 hash of that file ("c84fa6b830e38ee8a551df61172d53d7").

find files ignoring .svn and its decendents

list files recursively by size

Query wikipedia over DNS

Network Discover in a one liner

Redirect incoming traffic to SSH, from a port of your choosing
Stuck behind a restrictive firewall at work, but really jonesing to putty home to your linux box for some colossal cave? Goodness knows I was...but the firewall at work blocked all outbound connections except for ports 80 and 443. (Those were wide open for outbound connections.) So now I putty over port 443 and have my linux box redirect it to port 22 (the SSH port) before it routes it internally. So, my specific command would be: $iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 22 Note that I use -A to append this command to the end of the chain. You could replace that with -I to insert it at the beginning (or at a specific rulenum). My linux box is running slackware, with a kernel from circa 2001. Hopefully the mechanics of iptables haven't changed since then. The command is untested under any other distros or less outdated kernels. Of course, the command should be easy enough to adapt to whatever service on your linux box you're trying to reach by changing the numbers (and possibly changing tcp to udp, or whatever). Between putty and psftp, however, I'm good to go for hours of time-killing.


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: