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.

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

World cup college
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

2010-03-18 - Top 10 commands explained
There's a great article by Peteris Krumins explaining the current top 10 commands: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-ten-one-liners-from-commandlinefu-explained/
2010-03-03 - Commandlinefu @ SXSW 2010
Am going to be at SXSW this year, in case you want to submit any CLI nuggets or suggestions to me in person. Ping me on the @codeinthehole Twitter account.
2009-09-12 - Email updates now available
You can now enable email updates to let you know each time you're command is commented on.
2009-07-11 - API and javascript blog widget now available
A simple API has been released, allowing commands to be retrieved in various formats. This also allows commands to be embedded on blogs/homepages.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

Terminal - a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.
box(){ c=${2-=}; l=$c$c${1//?/$c}$c$c; echo -e "$l\n$c $1 $c\n$l"; unset c l;}
2010-02-26 17:14:52
User: mightybs
Functions: c++ echo unset
2
a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

First argument: string to put a box around.

Second argument: character to use for box (default is '=')

Same as command #4962, cleaned up, shortened, and more efficient. Now a ' * ' can be used as the box character, and the variables get unset so they don't mess with anything else you might have.

They marked c++ as a function for this command, but I'm not sure why. Must be a bug.

Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
box() { t="$1xxxx";c=${2:-=}; echo ${t//?/$c}; echo "$c $1 $c"; echo ${t//?/$c}; }
2010-02-26 13:17:12
User: bartonski
Functions: echo
6

First argument: string to put a box around.

Second argument: character to use for box (default is '=')

Same as command #4948, but shorter, and without the utility function.

box() { l=${#1}+4;x=${2:-=};n $l $x; echo "$x $1 $x"; n $l $x; }; n() { for (( i=0; $i<$1; i=$i+1)); do printf $2; done; printf "\n"; }
2010-02-26 06:56:59
User: bartonski
Functions: echo printf
1

The function 'box' takes either one or two arguments. The first argument is a line of text to be boxed, the second argument (optional) is a character to use to draw the box. By default, the drawing character will be '='.

The function 'n()' is a helper function used to draw the upper and lower lines of the box, its arguments are a length, and an character to print. (I used 'n' because 'line', 'ln' and 'l' are all commonly used)

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

Your point of view

You must be signed in to comment.

Related sites and podcasts