Commands by Thierry (1)

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Bash alias for creating screen session containing IRSSI, named irssi, while checking if existing session is created
Bash alias for easy irssi within screen, attempts to attach to existing irssi session, if one exists, otherwise creates one - Including wipe for when system reboots and leaves "dead" session.

Create a false directory structure for testing your commands
This will make a false directory with the same file names as whatever directory you choose. This is wise to use when testing scripts that alter contents, filenames, or move files. I wrote this after an OOPS I made when renaming a directory of JPGs, PNGs, PSDs that were mixed. I recommend this as I lost over 2000 vacation pictures and some graphics I designed for software and web sites. :( NOTE: This only creates name copies, that data itself is not copied.

Convert seconds to human-readable format
This example, for example, produces the output, "Fri Feb 13 15:26:30 EST 2009"

Massive change of file extension (bash)
Using bash parameters expansion

Get the 10 biggest files/folders for the current direcotry
This command simply outputs 10 files in human readable, that takes most space on your disk in current directory.

Remove security limitations from PDF documents using ghostscript (for Windows)
#4345 also works under windows

list files recursively by size

Display calendar with specific national holidays and week numbers
NB when you run this gcal command in your shell, holidays are highlighted but this highlighting does not show in the sample output (above). To find full details on gcal options: gcal --long-help | less Example for United States, Pennsylvania: gcal -K -q US_PA 2009 # display holidays in USA/Pennsylvania for 2009 (with week numbers) Example for Hong Kong: gcal -K -q HK 2009 # display holidays in Hong Kong for 2009 (with week numbers)

Tar - Compress by excluding folders
If you give tar a list of filenames, it will not add the directories, so if you don't care about directory ownership or permissions, you can save some space. Tar will create directories as necessary when extracting. This command is limited by the maximum supported size of the argument list, so if you are trying to tar up the whole OS for instance, you may just get "Argument list too long".

A DESTRUCTIVE command to render a drive unbootable
Overwrites the boot sector. Since this doesn't overwrite any data, you can usually recover by re-creating the partition table exactly the same as before you zeroed it. This can also help sometimes if you install a new drive in a Windows machine which can't read it.

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