All commands (14,187)

What's this?

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.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

scp a good script from host A which has no public access to host C, but with a hop by host B
middlehost allows ssh access from where you are but not securehost. Use nice ssh piping to simulate scp through A => B => C setting up the shell function if left as an exercise for the reader. ;-) Agent forwarding should avoid password typing.

Pipe STDOUT to vim
The hyphen tells vim to open from STDOUT - saves having to create temporary files.

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

How To Get the Apache Document Root
Grabs the Apache config file (yielded from httpd) and returns the path specified as DocumentRoot.

create pdf files from text files or stdout.

delete PBS jobs based on strings from qstat output

Download and install the OpenStore on the Ubuntu Phone
This will download and install the latest version of the open store on the ubuntu phone, this store includes unconfined applications such as the TweakGeek and the Ubuntu Touch Tweak Tool. You can see the install instructions from here: https://open.uappexplorer.com/docs#install

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).

resolve short urls
since the most url shorteners respond with a header containing the Location: ... this works with most common shorteners

Sprunge.us - CLI alternative to PasteBin.com
NAME sprunge: command line pastebin: SYNOPSIS | curl -F 'sprunge=


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: