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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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Show bash's function definitions you defined in .bash_profile or .bashrc
If you omit the function name, the command will display all definitions

replace a character/word/string in a file using vim
Replace all ocurrences in the file. The g option is to replace more than one occurrence in the same line. Whitout the g option, it only replace the first occurrence in the line.

Copy the full path of a file to the clipboard (requires xclip or similar)
Handy for those times you need to paste a file path in an IDE or some other app. sudo apt-get install xclip Then, for convenience, alias xclip to 'xclip -selection c' so you can just do something like realpath . | xclip

Rapidly invoke an editor to write a long, complex, or tricky command

Backup with versioning
Apart from an exact copy of your recent contents, also keep all earlier versions of files and folders that were modified or deleted. Inspired by EVACopy http://evacopy.sourceforge.net

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

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.

Replace Every occurrence of a word in a file
Replace 'this' with 'that'

Command line calculator

ROT13 using the tr command


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