Commands using xargs (769)

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Find files changed between dates defined by ctime of two files specified by name
This command finds all the files whose status has changed between the ctime of the older and newer . Very useful if you can see from an ls listing a block of consecutive files you want to move or delete, but can't figure out exactly the time range by date.

command line fu roulette
retrieves the html from a random command line fu page, then finds commands on the page and prints them alternatively, pipe to bash (add "| bash" to the end) to execute the command (very risky) edit: had to adjust to properly display the portion that replaces HTML characters (e.g. " -> ")

va - alias for editing aliases
When setting up a new aliases file, or having creating a new file.. About every time after editing an aliases file, I source it. This alias makes editing alias a bit easier and they are useful right away. Note if the source failed, it will not echo "aliases sourced". Sub in vi for your favorite editor, or alter for ksh, sh, etc.

Convert a Python interactive session to a python script
Used to copy and paste a terminal buffer of a python interactive session into an editor

Matrix Style

list files recursively by size

Show Apt/Dpkg configuration
Shows all configurations to apt and dpkg, rarely changed, you probably still have the default configuration. Go ahead and explore your configuration if you dare, perhaps change your apt-cache directory, Dir::Cache "var/cache/apt/"; or the names of the log files.

cd to (or operate on) a file across parallel directories
This is useful for quickly jumping around branches in a file system, or operating on a parellel file. This is tested in bash. cd to (substitute in PWD, a for b) where PWD is the bash environmental variable for the "working directory"

Multi-thread any command
For instance: $ find . -type f -name '*.wav' -print0 |xargs -0 -P 3 -n 1 flac -V8 will encode all .wav files into FLAC in parallel. Explanation of xargs flags: -P [max-procs]: Max number of invocations to run at once. Set to 0 to run all at once [potentially dangerous re: excessive RAM usage]. -n [max-args]: Max number of arguments from the list to send to each invocation. -0: Stdin is a null-terminated list. I use xargs to build parallel-processing frameworks into my scripts like the one here: http://pastebin.com/1GvcifYa

Rename files in batch


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