Commands by John

Commands by John_W (10)

sorted by

To get the CPU temperature continuously on the desktop

There is no need for variables. I also added sleep to reduce cpu usage, however I didn't test it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

while :; do acpi -t | osd_cat -p bottom ; sleep 1; done &

John_W · 2011-01-14 13:57:45 10
Recursively remove 0kb files from a directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

find . -empty -type f -delete

John_W · 2010-11-17 15:16:47 4
Echo several blank lines
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

yes '' | head -n100

John_W · 2010-09-08 14:59:34 5
Show the UUID of a filesystem or partition

Doesn't need to be run as root.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -alh

John_W · 2010-09-04 20:38:28 4
View the newest xkcd comic.

This function displays the latest comic from xkcd.com. One of the best things about xkcd is the title text when you hover over the comic, so this function also displays that after you close the comic. To get a random xkcd comic use the following: xkcdrandom() { wget -qO- http://dynamic.xkcd.com/comic/random | sed -n 's#^<img src="$http://imgs.[^"]\+$"\s\+title="$.\+\?$"\salt.\+$#eog "\1"\necho '"'\2'#p" | bash; } These are just a bit shorter than the ones eigthmillion wrote, however his version didn't work as expected on my laptop for some reason (I got the title-tag first), so these build a command which is executed by bash.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

xkcd() { wget -qO- http://xkcd.com/ | sed -n 's#^<img src="$http://imgs.[^"]\+$"\s\+title="$.\+\?$"\salt.\+$#eog "\1"\necho '"'\2'#p" | bash ; }

John_W · 2010-08-25 15:44:31 7
delete all trailing whitespace from each line in file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

sed -i 's/^\s\+//' <file>

John_W · 2010-08-23 22:08:40 6
Title Case Files

All words of the filenames except "a", "of", "that" and "to" are capitalized. To also match words which begin with a specific string, you can use this: rename 's/\b((?!hello\b|t)[a-z]+)/\u$1/g' * This will capitalize all words except "hello" and words beginning with "t".
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

rename 's/\b((?!(a|of|that|to)\b)[a-z]+)/\u$1/g' *

John_W · 2010-08-22 15:00:33 8
Title Case Files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

rename 's/\b([a-z])/\u$1/g' *

John_W · 2010-08-22 14:15:59 4
Remove Thumbs.db files from folders
This is sample output - yours may be different.
16

find ./ -name Thumbs.db -delete

John_W · 2010-08-18 11:25:24 9
Outgoing IP of server

Faster than the curl/wget-approaches.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

dig +short @resolver1.opendns.com myip.opendns.com

John_W · 2010-07-30 15:32:21 4

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

change up n directories

Change n directories up, without parameters change one up

execute your commands hiding secret bits from history records

$ wget --user=username --password="$password" http://example.org/ Instead of hiding commands entirely from history, I prefer to use "read" to put the password into a variable, and then use that variable in the commands instead of the password. Without the "-e" and "-s" it should work in any bourne-type shell, but the -s is what makes sure the password doesn't get echoed to the screen at all. (-e makes editing work a bit better)

Show all detected mountable Drives/Partitions/BlockDevices

Yields entries in the form of "/dev/hda1" etc. Use this if you are on a new system and don't know how the storage hardware (ide, sata, scsi, usb - with ever changing descriptors) is connected and which partitions are available. Far better than using "fdisk -l" on guessed device descriptors.

Shows a specific process memory usage

Quick command line math

expr will give you a quick way to do basic math from the CLI. Make sure you escape things like * and leave a space between operators and digits.

Change the extension of a filename by using rename to convert

This will change all files ending in .JPG to .jpg and will work with any file extension

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"

Advanced python tracing

Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

execute your commands hiding secret bits from history records

Complete TCP Handshake on a given host-port

Try to perform a fully TCP 3 way handshake on for a given host-port with a timeout of 1s.

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)
» commands by john_w

Commands by John_W (10) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

Commands by John_W (10)

sorted by