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After typing lots of commands in windows, save them to a batch file quickly
After typing the command below, you will be greeted with nothing. press the up arrow to find the previous command you typed, press enter. repeat this as many times as you need, then hit CTRL-Z and press enter to save to the 'batchfilename.bat' file.

Rename files in batch

Check to make sure the whois nameservers match the nameserver records from the nameservers themselves
Change the $domain variable to whichever domain you wish to query. Works with the majority of whois info; for some that won't, you may have to compromise: domain=google.com; for a in $(whois $domain | grep "Domain servers in listed order:" --after 3 | grep -v "Domain servers in listed order:"); do echo ">>> Nameservers for $domain from $a

Find out if a module is installed in perl
Shows the path if the module is installed or exit quietly (to simply avoid the 'No documentation found' msg).

Prints a file leaving out all blank lines and comment-only lines
Does not print any line that either: - is empty - contains only spaces or tabs - starts with # - starts with spaces/tabs followed by a #

Find usb device
I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

Scan a document to PDF
Adjust the --resolution and --mode as required (if these options are available for your scanner). The size options (-x, -y, -imageheight, -imagewidth) are for US letter paper. For A4, I think the command would be: $scanimage -p --resolution 250 --mode Gray -x 210 -y 297 | pnmtops -imageheight 11.7 -imagewidth 8.3 | ps2pdf - output.pdf

Perform a branching conditional
This will perform one of two blocks of code, depending on the condition of the first. Essentially is a bash terniary operator. To tell if a machine is up: $ ping -c1 machine { echo succes;} || { echo failed; } Because of the bash { } block operators, you can have multiple commands $ ping -c1 machine && { echo success;log-timestamp.sh }|| { echo failed; email-admin.sh; } Tips: Remember, the { } operators are treated by bash as a reserved word: as such, they need a space on either side. If you have a command that can fail at the end of the true block, consider ending said block with 'false' to prevent accidental execution

duration of the DNS-query

commandline dictionary
Note: 1) Replace 'wonder' with any word you looking the meaning for in the above example 2) Need to install these packages: wordnet & wordnet-base (latter should be automatically installed because of dependency) 3) Combined size of packages is about 30MB on my old ubuntu system (I find it worth it)


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