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

2012-05-20 - test
test
2012-05-20 - test
test
2012-05-20 - test
test
2012-05-20 - Test tweets
YU not working?
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

quickly backup or copy a file with bash

Terminal - quickly backup or copy a file with bash
cp -bfS.bak filename filename
2009-06-30 14:17:28
User: ioggstream
Functions: cp
6
Up
Down
quickly backup or copy a file with bash

less symbols, tab completion.

including # export SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX="_`date +%F`" in your .bashrc provides you to easily timestamp your files

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 6 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
cp filename{,.bak}
2009-02-05 17:12:03
User: elofland
Functions: cp
340
Up
Down
quickly backup or copy a file with bash
Comments (13) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
cp httpd.conf{,.bk}
2011-08-15 16:43:53
User: ideivid
Functions: cp
Tags: backup cp
15
Up
Down
Short and elegant way to backup a single file before you change it.

Remember to backup everything before changing it so you can restore all to normal.

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

$ cp -bfS.bak filename filename

could be shortened to

$ cp -bfS.bak filename{,}

...and if you don't mind the default backup suffix (~), it could be even shorter:

$ cp -bf filename{,}

Personally, when doing backups, I prefer to throw in the -a flag, so:

$ cp -abf filename{,}
Comment by kynnjo 38 weeks and 2 days ago

Your point of view

You must be signed in to comment.

Related sites and podcasts