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Display unique values of a column
Find the unique values of a column utilizing awk. Credits goes to here (posted by "era"): http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-scripting/77138-awk-print-distinct-col-values.html

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance
You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

Get absolut path to your bash-script
Another way of doing it that's a bit clearer. I'm a fan of readable code.

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).

Create subversion undo point
Allows you to save progress without committing. To revert to an undo point, svn revert then apply the undo point with patch. $ svn revert -R . && patch -p0 < .undo/2009-03-27_08:08:11rev57 Similar: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/373/archive-all-files-containing-local-changes-svn

sort monthwise
sort command can sort month-wise (first three letters of each month). See the sample output for clarification. Sorting Stable ? NO. Take note if that matters to you. Sample output suggests that sort performs unstable sorting (see the relative order of two 'feb' entries).

Follow tail by name (fix for rolling logs with tail -f)
If you use 'tail -f foo.txt' and it becomes temporarily moved/deleted (ie: log rolls over) then tail will not pick up on the new foo.txt and simply waits with no output. 'tail -F' allows you to follow the file by it's name, rather than a descriptor. If foo.txt disappears, tail will wait until the filename appears again and then continues tailing.

Convert a date to timestamp
Simple way to get a timestamp from a date

Compare two files side-by-side
I found out about this from Unix Power Tools, and thought it was pretty useful. Use the -w option to change the width of the output, and the -s option to suppress lines that are the same in both files.

Using commandoutput as a file descriptor
Description is moved to "Sample output" because the html sanitizer for commandlinefu breaks the examples..


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