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

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

Bash alias to output the current Swatch Internet Time
Output the current time in Swatch “Internet Time”, aka .beats. There are 1000 .beats in a day, and @0 is at 00:00 Central European Standard Time. This was briefly a thing in the late 1990s. More details: https://2020.swatch.com/en_ca/internet-time/ The alias is rather quote heavy to protect the subshell, so the bare command is: $ echo '@'$(TZ=GMT-1 date +'(%-S + %-M * 60 + %-H * 3600) / 86.4'|bc)

diff the same file in two directories.
This is useful when you're diffing two files of the same name in radically different directory trees. For example: Set $ path1='/some/long/convoluted/path/to/all/of/your/source/from/a/long/dead/machine' then $ path2='/local/version/of/same/file' then run the command. Much easier on the eyes when you're looking back across your command history, especially if you're doing the same diff over and over again.

copy from host1 to host2, through your host
Good if only you have access to host1 and host2, but they have no access to your host (so ncat won't work) and they have no direct access to each other.

draw line separator
Even shorter: $ seq -s '*' 120|tr -d '[0-9]'

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

List all open ports and their owning executables
Particularly useful on OS X where netstat doesn't have -p option.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Maximum PNG compression with optipng, advpng, and advdef
optipng and advancecomp (for the the advpng and advdef tools) are the best FOSS tools for losslessly compressing PNGs. With the above tool chain, you can cut off as much as 20% off a PNG's file size.

m4a to mp3 conversion with ffmpeg and lame
A batch file version of the same command would be: for f in *.m4a; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 256k "${f%.m4a}.mp3"; done


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: