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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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locating packages held back, such as with "aptitude hold "
locating packages held back, such as with "aptitude hold "

Find the biggest files on your hard drive

Insert an element into xml
This inserts an element as last child under /breakfast_menu/food in simple.xml. xml used - http://www.w3schools.com/xml/simple.xml

open two files on top of each other in vim (one window, two panes)

Watch YouTube and other Flash videos via mplayer (or whatever)
Many sites with Flash video players will download video files to /tmp on Linux, with temporary filenames like "FlashbGTHm4". These will often play in mplayer, totem, or other movie playing software. You must first navigate to a video page, let it start loading, and then pause playback.

Deal with dot files safely

The proper way to read kernel messages in realtime.

Rename files in batch

capture selected window

Place the NUM-th argument of the most recent command on the shell
After executing a command with multiple arguments like cp ./temp/test.sh ~/prog/ifdown.sh you can paste any argument of the previous command to the console, like ls -l ALT+1+. is equivalent to ls -l ./temp/test.sh ALT+0+. stands for command itself ('ls' in this case) Simple ALT+. cycles through last arguments of previous commands.


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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
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» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

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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,…):

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