Commands using xargs

This is a modified version of the OP, wrapped into a bash function.

This version handles newlines and other whitespace correctly, the original has problems with the thankfully rare case of newlines in the file names.

It also allows checking an arbitrary number of directories against each other, which is nice when the directories that you think might have duplicates don't have a convenient common ancestor directory.

You can simply run "largest", and list the top 10 files/directories in ./, or you can pass two parameters, the first being the directory, the 2nd being the limit of files to display.

Best off putting this in your bashrc or bash_profile file

Did some research and found the previous command wrong, we don't kill a zombie but its parent. Just made some modifcation to khashmeshab's command.

do 1000 at a time so that if your doodoo is deep you can avoid avoid "command-line too big" error

find . = will set up your recursive search. You can narrow your search to certain file by adding -name "*.ext" or limit buy using the same but add prune like -name "*.ext" -prune

xargs =sets it up like a command line for each file find finds and will invoke the next command which is perl.

perl = invoke perl

-p sets up a while loop

-i in place and the .bak will create a backup file like filename.ext.bak

-e execute the following....

's/ / /;' your basic substitute and replace.

Open all files which have some string go directly to the first line where that string is and run command on it.

Other examples:

Run vim only once with multiple files (and just go to string in the first one):

Run vim for each file, go to string in every one and run command (to delete line):

Good for when your working on building a clean source install for RPM packaging or what have you. After testing, run this command to compare the original extracted source to your working source directory and it will remove the differences that are created when running './configure' and 'make'.

for debian/ubuntu

Show the UUID-based alternate device names of ZEVO-related partitions on Darwin/OS X. Adapted from the lines by dbrady at http://zevo.getgreenbytes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=700#p700 and following the disk device naming scheme at http://zevo.getgreenbytes.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.DiskDeviceNames

Sometimes my /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory gets quite big in size. If that happens I run this command to remove old package files. Packages that we're upgraded in last N days are kept in case you are forced to downgrade a specific package. The command is obviously Arch Linux related.

Probably neither faster nor better than -delete in find. It's just that I generally dislike teaching find builtin actions.

This is the closest you can get to "reset printing system" from the command line. Giving credit back to J D McIninch from an apple forum back in 2009.

Uses the --porcelain option, which is garanteed to be stable among git versions and configurations - also, is way easier to parse.