Commands by bwoodacre (6)

  • If the pdf/dvi/etc documentation for a latex package is already part of your local texmf tree, then texdoc will find and display it for you. If the documentation is not available on your system, it will bring up the package's webpage at CTAN to help you investigate. Show Sample Output


    2
    texdoc packagename
    bwoodacre · 2010-05-23 20:02:32 0
  • ncdu is a text-mode ncurses-based disk usage analyzer. Useful for when you want to see where all your space is going. For a single flat directory it isn't more elaborate than an du|sort or some such thing, but this analyzes all directories below the one you specify so space consumed by files inside subdirectories is taken into account. This way you get the full picture. Features: file deletion, file size or size on disk and refresh as contents change. Homepage: http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu Show Sample Output


    5
    ncdu directory_name
    bwoodacre · 2009-06-09 00:02:48 2
  • txt2regex can be interactive or noninteractive and generates regular expressions for a variety of dialects based on user input. In interactive mode, the regex string builds as you select menu options. The sample output here is from noninteractive mode, try running it standalone and see for yourself. It's written in bash and is available as the 'txt2regex' package at least under debian/ubuntu. Show Sample Output


    8
    txt2regex
    bwoodacre · 2009-04-29 04:00:22 4
  • 'dpkg -S' just matches the string you supply it, so just using 'ls' as an argument matches any file from any package that has 'ls' anywhere in the filename. So usually it's a good idea to use an absolute path. You can see in the second example that 12 thousand files that are known to dpkg match the bare string 'ls'. Show Sample Output


    45
    dpkg -S /usr/bin/ls
    bwoodacre · 2009-04-18 18:18:23 11
  • This command sequence allows simple setup of (gasp!) password-less SSH logins. Be careful, as if you already have an SSH keypair in your ~/.ssh directory on the local machine, there is a possibility ssh-keygen may overwrite them. ssh-copy-id copies the public key to the remote host and appends it to the remote account's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. When trying ssh, if you used no passphrase for your key, the remote shell appears soon after invoking ssh user@host.


    20
    ssh-keygen; ssh-copy-id user@host; ssh user@host
    bwoodacre · 2009-03-18 07:59:33 3
  • This invokes tar on the remote machine and pipes the resulting tarfile over the network using ssh and is saved on the local machine. This is useful for making a one-off backup of a directory tree with zero storage overhead on the source. Variations on this include using compression on the source by using 'tar cfvp' or compression at the destination via ssh user@host "cd dir; tar cfp - *" | gzip - > file.tar.gz


    6
    ssh user@host "cd targetdir; tar cfp - *" | dd of=file.tar
    bwoodacre · 2009-03-18 07:43:22 3

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

Set file access control lists
The file myfile is owned by tom and has read and write permissions for tom. Group and other permissions are empty which make myfile readable and writable only by tom. setfacl enables user tom to give read permission to user john only. The command 'ls -l' shows a '+' sign telling us that file access control list has been setup for myfile.

Backup with versioning
Apart from an exact copy of your recent contents, also keep all earlier versions of files and folders that were modified or deleted. Inspired by EVACopy http://evacopy.sourceforge.net

Show a 4-way scrollable process tree with full details.
If you want a visual representation of the parent/child relationships between processes, this is one easy way to do it. It's useful in debugging collections of shell scripts, because it provides something like a call traceback. When a shell script breaks, just remember "awwfux".

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

archlinux: shows list of files installed by a package
Shows the files which the package, for example gvim, installed on your system.

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Instant mirror from your laptop + webcam

Compare two directories
Output of this command is the difference of recursive file lists in two directories (very quick!). To view differences in content of files too, use the command submitted by mariusbutuc (very slow!): $ diff -rq path_to_dir1 path_to_dir2

exclude a column with awk
Here's an awk alternative, for those lacking the version of cut with the --complement argument.

increase recursively the modification time for a list of files
Increase the modification date for the files selected with the find command.


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: