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commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. 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.

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Safe Delete
remove file that has sensitive info safely. Overwrites it 33 times with zeros

add the result of a command into vi
in command mode, navigate your cursor to the line where you want the command output to appear, and hit "!!". No need to enter edit mode or even type a ":" (colon).

Print every Nth line
Sometimes commands give you too much feedback. Perhaps 1/100th might be enough. If so, every() is for you. $ my_verbose_command | every 100 will print every 100th line of output. Specifically, it will print lines 100, 200, 300, etc If you use a negative argument it will print the *first* of a block, $ my_verbose_command | every -100 It will print lines 1, 101, 201, 301, etc The function wraps up this useful sed snippet: $ ... | sed -n '0~100p' don't print anything by default $ sed -n starting at line 0, then every hundred lines ( ~100 ) print. $ '0~100p' There's also some bash magic to test if the number is negative: we want character 0, length 1, of variable N. $ ${N:0:1} If it *is* negative, strip off the first character ${N:1} is character 1 onwards (second actual character).

Windows telnet
Check if TCP port is reacheable

Switch all connected PulseAudio bluetooth devices to A2DP profile
Tries to switch all audio devices to the A2DP profile for optimal sound quality. Useful for bluetooth speakers and headphones that always power up in HSP/HFP mode. Note however that this command is only a shorthand for the GUI, so it cannot fix stubborn BT controllers that leave your device stuck in HSP mode until a manual re-coupling.

Extract tarball from internet without local saving

Count all the files in the directory and child directories

Edit file(s) that has been just listed
That will open vi with the four README files in different viewports. Specially handy when you find there is only one file matching your pattern and you don't want to specify the full path.

Rename files in batch

Diff remote webpages using wget


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