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).

Find out the starting directory of a script

Terminal - Find out the starting directory of a script
mydir=$(cd $(dirname ${BASH_SOURCE:-$0});pwd)
2011-04-27 16:33:38
User: xeor
Functions: cd dirname
0
Up
Down
Find out the starting directory of a script

I submitted a command like this without $0 if $BASH_SOURCE is unset. Therefor, it did only work when using ./script, not using 'sh script'. This version handles both, and will set $mydir in a script to the current working directory. It also works on linux, osx and probably bsd.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
echo "${0%/*}"
2011-04-17 12:09:56
User: mhs
Functions: echo
Tags: Process Management parameter expansion special parameters
9
Up
Down
Find out the starting directory of a script

Invoked from within a shell script, this will print the directory in which the script resides. Doesn't depend on external tools, /proc/self/*, etc.. (`echo` is a shell builtin.) To see the *current working* directory of a script, use `pwd`.

Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
eval ls -l /proc/{$(pgrep -d, COMMAND)}/cwd
2011-04-14 13:41:58
User: splante
Functions: eval ls
Tags: Process Management
3
Up
Down
Find out current working directory of a process

This is an alternative to another command using two xargs. If it's a command you know there's only one of, you can just use:

ls -l /proc/$(pgrep COMMAND)/cwd
Show sample output | Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
echo COMMAND | xargs -ixxx ps -C xxx -o pid= | xargs -ixxx ls -l /proc/xxx/cwd
2009-02-25 05:49:03
User: ento
Functions: echo ls ps xargs
Tags: Process Management
2
Up
Down
Find out current working directory of a process
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
readlink /proc/self/cwd
2011-04-14 23:14:28
User: linuts
Functions: readlink
Tags: Process Management
2
Up
Down
Find out current working directory of a process
Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
pwdx $(pgrep command)
2013-02-01 08:33:15
User: weidenrinde
Tags: Process Management
0
Up
Down
Find out current working directory of a process

The pwdx command reports the current working directory of a process or processes.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

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