If you cat the file, all the parts of the command line are bunched up. If you use tr to convert the nulls to spaces, you're still left without a newline unless you add another step. This command does everything for you. Show Sample Output

Dialog's gauge widget accepts progress updates on stdin. This version runs dialog once and updates it every second. There's no need to use timeout which causes screen flicker since it restarts dialog for each update.

2d6 dice: awk 'BEGIN { srand(); a=int(rand()*6)+1; b=int(rand()*6)+1; print a " + " b " = " a+b }' 3 + 6 = 9 Show Sample Output

For BSD-based systems, including OS X, that don't have seq. This version provides a default using tput in case $COLUMNS is not set: jot -b '#' -s '' ${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)} Show Sample Output

Pure Bash This will print a row of characters the width of the screen without using any external executables. In some cases, COLUMNS may not be set. Here is an alternative that uses tput to generate a default if that's the case. And it still avoids using tr. printf -v row "%${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}s"; echo ${row// /#} The only disadvantage to either one is that they create a variable. Show Sample Output

A similar version for Bash that doesn't require cut and shortens the function in a few places. And it uses local variables. (similar to a version by eightmillion in a comment on the another version) Show Sample Output

This will output the characters at 10 per second.

A function that takes a domain name as an argument Show Sample Output

Calculating series with awk only, no need for seq: add numbers from 1 to 100 Variations: 1+3+...+(2n-1) = n^2 awk 'BEGIN {for(i=1;i<=19;i+=2)sum+=i}; END {print sum}' /dev/null # displays 100 1/2 + 1/4 + ... = 1 awk 'BEGIN {for(i=1;i<=10;i++)sum+=1/(2**i)}; END {print sum}' /dev/null # displays 0.999023 Show Sample Output

Just one character longer than the sed version ('FNR==5' versus -n 5p). On my system, without using "exit" or "q", the awk version is over four times faster on a ~900K file using the following timing comparison: testfile="testfile"; for cmd in "awk 'FNR==20'" "sed -n '20p'"; do echo; echo $cmd; eval "$cmd $testfile"; for i in {1..3}; do time for j in {1..100}; do eval "$cmd $testfile" >/dev/null; done; done; done Adding "exit" or "q" made the difference between awk and sed negligible and produced a four-fold improvement over the awk timing without the "exit". For long files, an exit can speed things up: awk 'FNR==5{print;exit}' <file>

I've corrected the function. My octal conversion formula was completely wrong. Thanks to pgas at http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/071 for setting me straight. The new function is from pgas and is very fast. Show Sample Output

You can display, save and restore the value of $IFS using conventional Bash commands, but these functions, which you can add to your ~/.bashrc file make it really easy. To display $IFS use the function ifs shown above. In the sample output, you can see that it displays the characters and their hexadecimal equivalent. This function saves it in a variable called $saveIFS: sifs () { saveIFS=$IFS; } Use this function to restore it rifs () { IFS=$saveIFS; } Add this line in your ~/.bashrc file to save a readonly copy of $IFS: declare -r roIFS=$IFS Use this function to restore that one to $IFS rrifs () { IFS=$roIFS; } Show Sample Output

I like the fact the Patola's version uses only ones and zeros, but I also like the sparse output of the other versions. This one combines both of those features and eliminates some unnecessary cruft. You can vary the sparseness by changing "$(($RANDOM % 5))" to another number. The number in this term "$(($RANDOM % 4))" controls how frequently the numbers are output bold.

This is just for fun. Show Sample Output

Bash 4 will let you do {00..19} to get leading zeros, but Bash 3 doesn't have that feature. This technique gets you partway there (the sequences need be such that the last digit ranges from zero to nine - you can't use this for something like Bash 4's {03..27}, for example). When this limitation is not a problem, you can avoid some complicated string manipulation for concatenating leading zeros. You can add more digits like this: {0..1}{0..9}{0..9} (ranges from 0 to 99 with up to two leading zeros). To pad with additional zeros: for i in 000{0..1}{0..9}; do echo $i; done or for i in {0..1}{0..9}; do echo "000$i"; done This is useful for creating values to sort or for creating filenames with a fixed format. Note that this will also work: touch {0..1}{0..9} Show Sample Output

Define a function vert () { echo $1 | grep -o '.'; } Use it to print some column headers paste <(vert several) <(vert parallel) <(vert vertical) <(vert "lines of") <(vert "text can") <(vert "be used") <(vert "for labels") <(vert "for columns") <(vert "of numbers") Show Sample Output

If you should happen to find yourself needing some binary numbers, this is a quickie way of doing it. If you need more digits, just add more "{0..1}" sequences for each digit you need. You can assign them to an array, too, and access them by their decimal equivalent for a quickie binary to decimal conversion (for larger values it's probably better to use another method). Note: this works in bash, ksh and zsh. For zsh, though, you'll need to issue a setopt KSH_ARRAYS to make the array zero-based. binary=({0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}) echo ${binary[9]} Show Sample Output

This command displays a clock on your terminal which updates the time every second. Press Ctrl-C to exit. A couple of variants: A little bit bigger text: watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet -f big" You can try other figlet fonts, too. Big sideways characters: watch -n 1 -t '/usr/games/banner -w 30 $(date +%M:%S)' This requires a particular version of banner and a 40-line terminal or you can adjust the width ("30" here). Show Sample Output