Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

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:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands using sh

Commands using sh from sorted by
Terminal - Commands using sh - 36 results
find /Applications -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec sh -c 'echo "{}"; (plutil -convert xml1 -o - "{}/Contents/Info.plist" | xpath /dev/stdin "concat(\"v\", /plist/dict/string[preceding-sibling::key[1]=\"CFBundleShortVersionString\"]/node())" 2>/dev/null)' \;
2013-03-29 14:01:23
User: darkfader
Functions: find sh
Tags: osx
-1
Up
Down
List OSX applications and versions.

Uses find, plutil and xpath.

Note: Some applications don't have proper information. system_profiler might be better to use.

It's a bit slow query.

Due to command length limit, I removed -name "*.app" and CFBundleName.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f -size +0 -printf "%-25s%p\n" | sort -n | uniq -D -w 25 | sed 's/^\w* *\(.*\)/md5sum "\1"/' | sh | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
2013-02-23 20:44:20
User: jimetc
Functions: find sed sh sort uniq
0
Up
Down
Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)

Avoids the nested 'find' commands but doesn't seem to run any faster than syssyphus's solution.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
prefix="169.254" && for i in {0..254}; do echo $prefix.$i/8; for j in {1..254}; do sh -c "ping -m 1 -c 1 -t 1 $prefix.$i.$j | grep \"icmp\" &" ; done; done
2012-07-25 12:07:15
User: tempelorg
Functions: echo sh
Tags: ping
0
Up
Down
Ping sweep without NMAP

This version combines the best of the other suggestions and adds these features:

1. It scans a /16 subnet

2. It is very fast by running the ping commands in the background, running them in parallel.

3. Does not use the "-W" option as that's not available in older ping versions (I needed this for OS X 10.5)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find ./ -type f -exec sh -c 'echo "{}" "$(dirname "{}")/$(basename "{}" | tr "[A-Z]" "[a-z]")"' \;
2012-06-14 07:13:42
User: jelloir
Functions: find sh
Tags: bash find mv rename tr
0
Up
Down
recursively change file name from uppercase to lowercase (or viceversa)

Handles spaces in file names and directories. Optionally change directories as well by pipe to tr from dirname.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
grep "$1" urls.txt | awk '{print "curl --write-out "$0"=http-%{http_code}\"\n\" --silent --output /dev/null "$0'} | sh >> responses.txt
2012-04-30 01:02:50
User: CookyBear
Functions: awk grep sh
0
Up
Down
Reads a list of urls, fetches each one and logs the url and http status code
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
rlwrap -S "$STY> " sh -c 'while read; do screen -S "'"$STY"'" -X $REPLY; done'
2012-04-16 21:49:06
User: bandie91
Functions: screen sh
Tags: screen rlwrap
0
Up
Down
GNU screen internal console

run it inside a screen session, you send commands to screen itself!

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f \! -name "*.md5" -exec sh -c 'md5sum "$1" > $1.md5' -- {} \;
2012-04-14 09:29:15
User: k2s
Functions: find sh
0
Up
Down
Recreate md5 checksum files for files in folder and subfolders
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sh time.sh 1 20 & var1="$!" & sh time.sh 2 10 & var2="$!" & sh time.sh 3 40 & var3="$!" & sh time.sh 4 30 & var4="$!" ; wait $var1 && wait $var2 && wait $var3 && wait $var4
2012-03-31 10:03:58
User: julnegre
Functions: sh wait
Tags: PID wait asynchronous $!
0
Up
Down
Asynchronous PID Management

This command explains how to manage some asynchronous PID in a global process.

The command uses 4 processes in a global process. The asynchronous scripts are simulated by a time.sh script

more infos :

http://code-esperluette.blogspot.fr/2012/03/bash-gestion-de-processus-asynchrones.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxsPyAtD70I

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
adb shell ps | grep my.app.packagename | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -I ? sh -c "adb logcat -v time | grep ?"
2012-03-14 10:02:11
User: jackpatmos
Functions: awk grep ps sh xargs
Tags: adb
0
Up
Down
Filter Android log output by PID
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
pygmentize -l sh ~/.bashrc | less -R
2012-01-27 03:27:37
User: captaincomic
Functions: less sh
Tags: pygments pygmentize
0
Up
Down
Quick syntax highlighting with multiple output formats

On Debian/Ubuntu the pygments script is called pygmentize and can be found in the python-pygments package.

For an overview of all available lexers, formatters, styles and filters use

pygmentize -L

Here is an example using more options

pygmentize -f 256 -l sh -F whitespace:spaces=True,tabs=True -O style=borland ~/.bashrc | less -R
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo sh -c "echo '127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com' >> /etc/hosts"
2012-01-16 14:06:51
User: devalnor
Functions: sh sudo
6
Up
Down
Stop procrastination on Facebook.com

or

echo '127.0.0.1 facebook.com' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Do not execute this command if you don't know what you are doing.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
lso(){ jot -w '%04d' 7778 0000 7777 |sed '/[89]/d;s,.*,printf '"'"'& '"'"';chmod & '"$1"';ls -l '"$1"'|sed s/-/./,' \ |sh \ |{ echo "lso(){";echo "ls \$@ \\";echo " |sed '";sed 's, ,@,2;s,@.*,,;s,\(.* \)\(.*\),s/\2/\1/,;s, ,,';echo \';echo };};}
2012-01-08 05:48:24
User: argv
Functions: chmod echo ls sed sh
0
Up
Down
ls output with mode in octal

this requires the use of a throwaway file.

it outputs a shell function.

assuming the throwaway file is f.tmp

usage: >f.tmp;lso f.tmp > f.tmp; . f.tmp;rm f.tmp;lso -l ...

notes:

credit epons.org for the idea. however his version did not account for the sticky bit and other special cases.

many of the 4096 permutations of file permissions make no practical sense. but chmod will still create them.

one can achieve the same sort of octal output with stat(1), if that utility is available.

here's another version to account for systems with seq(1) instead of jot(1):

lso(){

case $# in

1)

{ case $(uname) in

FreeBSD)

jot -w '%04d' 7778 0000 7777 ;;

*)

seq -w 0000 7777 ;;

esac; } \

|sed '

/[89]/d

s,.*,printf '"'"'& '"'"';chmod & '"$1"';ls -l '"$1"'|sed s/-/./,' \

|sh \

|{

echo "lso(){";

echo "ls \$@ \\";

echo " |sed '";

sed '

s, ,@,2;

s,@.*,,;

s,\(.* \)\(.*\),s/\2/\1/,;

s, ,,';

echo \';

echo };

};

;;

*)

echo "usage: lso tmp-file";

;;

esac;

}

this won't print out types[1]. but its purpose is not to examine types. its focus is on mode and its purpose is to make mode easier to read (assuming one finds octal easier to read).

1. one could of course argue "everything is a file", but not always a "regular" one. e.g., a "directory" is really just a file comprising a list.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo sh -c 'gunzip -c source.gz > destination'
2011-07-05 23:51:01
User: UnixNeko
Functions: sh sudo
Tags: Ubuntu gunzip nagios privilege Lucid Lynx
0
Up
Down
Extract a .gz file with privilege

Extracting .gz files and placing the output in another directory in one command line is convenient thing.

I just followed some how-to to install Nagios on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx but they give the method to install from archives. I wished to install from the repository. If you do so some files are missing. I've not tested yet but this is an example command line I did to extract

sudo sh -c 'gunzip -c /usr/share/doc/nagios3-common/examples/template-object/templates.cfg.gz > /etc/nagios3/objects/templates.cfg'

We need privilege to write the destination file.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -name '*.epub' -exec sh -c 'a={}; ebook-convert $a ${a%.epub}.mobi --still --more --options' \;
2011-04-21 22:03:01
User: joedhon
Functions: find sh
Tags: recursive calibre ebook conversion epub
0
Up
Down
Recursive script to find all epubs in the current dir and subs, then convert to mobi using calibre's ebook-convert utility

-exec sh -c 'var={}; do something with var' lets you do things in a sub-shell

while it's faster to type, I'm not sure if dozens of subshells execute quicker than the while loops.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -name "*.java" -type f -perm +600 -print | xargs -I _ sh -c 'grep -q hexianmao _ && iconv -f gb2312 -t utf8 -o _ -c _ '
2011-03-08 13:02:25
User: Sunng
Functions: find iconv sh xargs
Tags: find xargs iconv
-1
Up
Down
Convert one's Java source file encoding

One of my friends committed his code in the encoding of GB2312, which broke the build job. I have to find his code and convert.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
svn status | grep '^?' | sed -e 's/^? */svn add "/g' -e 's/$/"/g'|sh ; svn status | grep '^!' | sed -e 's/^! */svn delete "/g' -e 's/$/"/g'|sh
2010-11-18 09:57:45
User: ironmarc
Functions: grep sed sh
Tags: svn delete add automatically
1
Up
Down
SVN script for automatically adding and deleting files
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo sh /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
2010-11-14 00:00:55
User: Alz
Functions: sh sudo
Tags: Ubuntu dvd
-1
Up
Down
Enabling some DVD playback enhancements in Ubuntu

This command works at least in 9.04+

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ontouchdo(){ while :; do a=$(stat -c%Y "$1"); [ "$b" != "$a" ] && b="$a" && sh -c "$2"; sleep 1; done }
2010-10-22 23:25:12
User: putnamhill
Functions: sh sleep stat
Tags: stat
10
Up
Down
run a command whenever a file is touched

This is useful if you'd like to see the output of a script while you edit it. Each time you save the file the command is executed. I thought for sure something like this already exists - and it probably does. I'm on an older system and tend to be missing some useful things.

Examples:

ontouchdo yourscript 'clear; yourscript somefiletoparse'

Edit yourscript in a separate window and see new results each time you save.

ontouchdo crufty.html 'clear; xmllint --noout crufty.html 2>&1 | head'

Keep editing krufty.html until the xmllint window is empty.

Note: Mac/bsd users should use stat -f%m. If you don't have stat, you can use perl -e '$f=shift; @s=stat($f); print "$s[9]\n";' $1

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cd /proc&&ps a -opid=|xargs -I+ sh -c '[[ $PPID -ne + ]]&&echo -e "\n[+]"&&tr -s "\000" " "<+/cmdline&&echo&&tr -s "\000\033" "\nE"<+/environ|sort'
2010-10-22 02:34:33
User: AskApache
Functions: cd sh xargs
Tags: bash screen sort echo xargs tr process ps askapache escape processes env environ environment cmdline
0
Up
Down
View All Processess Cmdlines and Environments

Grabs the cmdline used to execute the process, and the environment that the process is being run under. This is much different than the 'env' command, which only lists the environment for the shell. This is very useful (to me at least) to debug various processes on my server. For example, this lets me see the environment that my apache, mysqld, bind, and other server processes have.

Here's a function I use:

aa_ps_all () { ( cd /proc && command ps -A -opid= | xargs -I'{}' sh -c 'test $PPID -ne {}&&test -r {}/cmdline&&echo -e "\n[{}]"&&tr -s "\000" " "<{}/cmdline&&echo&&tr -s "\000\033" "\nE"<{}/environ|sort&&cat {}/limits' ); }

From my .bash_profile at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
xargs -n1 -P100 -I{} sh -c 'ssh {} uptime >output/{} 2>error/{}' <hostlist
2010-08-20 11:03:11
User: dooblem
Functions: sh uptime xargs
Tags: ssh xargs parallel
3
Up
Down
run command on a group of nodes in parallel redirecting outputs

Do the same as pssh, just in shell syntax.

Put your hosts in hostlist, one per line.

Command outputs are gathered in output and error directories.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo sh -c "apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade;apt-get autoremove;apt-get autoclean"
2010-08-13 16:12:18
User: l0b0
Functions: sh sudo
-8
Up
Down
Clean upgrade of Ubuntu

Gets you the latest of everything, and removes any remaining junk. The "sh -c" part is so that you'll only run a single sh command, so you won't get asked more than once for the password.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sh -c 'if pgrep x2vnc && env LC_ALL=C xmessage -button "Kill it:0,Ignore it:1" "Another connection is already running. Should I kill it instead of ignoring it?"; then killall x2vnc; fi; x2vnc -passwd /home/Ariel/.vnc/passwd -east emerson:0'
2010-07-06 09:11:12
User: zhangweiwu
Functions: env killall sh
Tags: Process Management X Window
0
Up
Down
create an application launcher shortcut that allow only one process of it running

This command is suitable to use as application launching command for a desktop shortcut. It checks if the application is already running by pgrepping its process ID, and offer user to kill the old process before starting a new one.

It is useful for a few x11 application that, if re-run, is more likely a mistake. In my example, x2vnc is an x11 app that does not quit when its connection is broken, and would not work well when a second process establish a second connection after the first broken one.

The LC_ALL=C for xmesseng is necessary for OpenSUSE systems to avoid a bug. If you don't find needing it, remove the "env LC_ALL=C" part

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
proceed_sudo () { sudor_command="`HISTTIMEFORMAT=\"\" history 1 | sed -r -e 's/^.*?sudor//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`" ; sudo sh -c "$sudor_command"; }; alias sudor="proceed_sudo # "
2010-06-29 14:56:29
User: mechmind
Functions: alias sh sudo
Tags: history sudo
3
Up
Down
sudo for entire line (including pipes and redirects)

USAGE: $ sudor your command

This command uses a dirty hack with history, so be sure you not turned it off.

WARNING!

This command behavior differ from other commands. It more like text macro, so you shouldn't use it in subshells, non-interactive sessions, other functions/aliases and so on. You shouldn't pipe into sudor (any string that prefixes sudor will be removed), but if you really want, use this commands:

proceed_sudo () { sudor_command="`HISTTIMEFORMAT=\"\" history 1 | sed -r -e 's/^.*?sudor//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`" ; pre_sudor_command="`history 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5- | sed -r -e 's/sudor.*$//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`"; if [ -n "${pre_sudor_command/ */}" ] ; then eval "${pre_sudor_command%| *}" | sudo sh -c "$sudor_command"; else sudo sh -c "$sudor_command" ;fi ;}; alias sudor="proceed_sudo # "
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -type f | sed 's,.*,stat "&" | egrep "File|Modify" | tr "\\n" " " ; echo ,' | sh | sed 's,[^/]*/\(.*\). Modify: \(....-..-.. ..:..:..\).*,\2 \1,' | sort
2010-05-27 22:30:18
User: pepin
Functions: echo egrep find sed sh tr
-3
Up
Down
Find files and list them with a readable informative output
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sh default values
2010-03-26 02:36:57
User: rootgeek
Functions: sh
Tags: foundry
-4
Up
Down
Display default values on Foundry (Brocade) RX and MLX BigIron L3 (routers & switches)
Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate