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

re-assign line numbers

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"

Convert "man page" to text file
You can convert any UNIX man page to .txt

Replace php short open tags
Tired of front end developers using short open tags in your views? This will replace all instances of

Download mp3 files linked in a RSS podcast feed
Directly download all mp3 files of the desired podcast

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.

Press Any Key to Continue
Halt script progress until a key has been pressed. Source: http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php/mirroring/bashfaq/065

ls -qahlSr # list all files in size order - largest last
I find it useful, when cleaning up deleting unwanted files to make more space, to list in size order so I can delete the largest first. Note that using "q" shows files with non-printing characters in name. In this sample output (above), I found two copies of the same iso file both of which are immediate "delete candidates" for me.

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"

Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy


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: