A nice way to use the console in full screen without forget the current time. you can too add other infos like cpu and mem use. Show Sample Output

Run the alias command, then issue ps aux | head and resize your terminal window (putty/console/hyperterm/xterm/etc) then issue the same command and you'll understand. ${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} Insructs the shell that if LINES is not set or null to use the output from `tput lines` ( ncurses based terminal access ) to get the number of lines in your terminal. But furthermore, in case that doesn't work either, it will default to using the deafault of 12 (-2 = 10). The default for HEAD is to output the first 10 lines, this alias changes the default to output the first x lines instead, where x is the number of lines currently displayed on your terminal - 2. The -2 is there so that the top line displayed is the command you ran that used HEAD, ie the prompt. Depending on whether your PS1 and/or PROMPT_COMMAND output more than 1 line (mine is 3) you will want to increase from -2. So with my prompt being the following, I need -7, or - 5 if I only want to display the commandline at the top. ( https://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt/ ) 275MB/748MB [7995:7993 - 0:186] 06:26:49 Thu Apr 08 [askapache@n1-backbone5:/dev/pts/0 +1] ~ In most shells the LINES variable is created automatically at login and updated when the terminal is resized (28 linux, 23/20 others for SIGWINCH) to contain the number of vertical lines that can fit in your terminal window. Because the alias doesn't hard-code the current LINES but relys on the $LINES variable, this is a dynamic alias that will always work on a tty device. Show Sample Output

shorter than alternative

Displays an animated hourglass for x amount of seconds Show Sample Output

this leaves the cursor at the bottom of the terminal screen, where your eyes are. ctrl-l moves it to the top, forcing you to look up.

Looks best in an 80x24 256-color terminal emulator.

Barely worth posting because it is so simple, but I use it literally all the time. I was always frustrated by the limitations that a non-gui environment imposes on diff'ing files. This fixes some of those limitations by colourising the output (you'll have to install colordiff, but it is just a wrapper for diff itself), using side-by-side mode for clearer presentation, and of course, the -W parameter, using tput to automatically insert you terminal width. Note that the double quotes aren't necessary if typed into terminal as-is. I included them for safety sake,

Use tput cols to find the width of the terminal and set it as the minimum field width. Show Sample Output

hypnotizing pendulum

Very useful for interactive scripts where you would like to return the terminal contents to its original state before the script was run. This would be similar to how vi exits and returns you to your original terminal screen. Save and clear the terminal contents with: tput smcup Execute some commands, then restore the saved terminal contents with: tput rmcup

This is super fast and an easy way to test your terminal for 256 color support. Unlike alot of info about changing colors in the terminal, this uses the ncurses termcap/terminfo database to determine the escape codes used to generate the colors for a specific TERM. That means you can switch your terminal and then run this to check the real output. tset xterm-256color at any rate that is some super lean code! Here it is in function form to stick in your .bash_profile aa_256 () { ( x=`tput op` y=`printf %$((${COLUMNS}-6))s`; for i in {0..256}; do o=00$i; echo -e ${o:${#o}-3:3} `tput setaf $i;tput setab $i`${y// /=}$x; done ) } From my bash_profile: http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

You will see it on the corner of your running terminal. Show Sample Output

Generates a TV noise alike output in the terminal. Can be combined with https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/9728/make-some-powerful-pink-noise

Print a row of characters across the terminal. Uses tput to establish the current terminal width, and generates a line of characters just long enough to cross it. In the example '#' is used. It's possible to use a repeating sequence by dividing the columns by the number of characters in the sequence like this: seq -s'~-' 0 $(( $(tput cols) /2 )) | tr -d '[:digit:]' or seq -s'-~?' 0 $(( $(tput cols) /3 )) | tr -d '[:digit:]' You will lose chararacters at the end if the length isn't cleanly divisible. Show Sample Output

cat mod_log_config.c | shmore or shmore < mod_log_config.c Most pagers like less, more, most, and others require additional processes to be loaded, additional cpu time used, and if that wasn't bad enough, most of them modify the output in ways that can be undesirable. What I wanted was a "more" pager that was basically the same as running: cat file Without modifying the output and without additional processes being created, cpu used, etc. Normally if you want to scroll the output of cat file without modifying the output I would have to scroll back my terminal or screen buffer because less modifies the output. After looking over many examples ranging from builtin cat functions created for csh, zsh, ksh, sh, and bash from the 80's, 90s, and more recent examples shipped with bash 4, and after much trial and error, I finally came up with something that satisifed my objective. It automatically adjusts to the size of your terminal window by using the LINES variable (or 80 lines if that is empty) so This is a great function that will work as long as your shell works, so it will work just find if you are booted in single user mode and your /usr/bin directory is missing (where less and other pagers can be). Using builtins like this is fantastic and is comparable to how busybox works, as long as your shell works this will work. One caveat/note: I always have access to a color terminal, and I always setup both the termcap and the terminfo packages for color terminals (and/or ncurses and slang), so for that reason I stuck the tput setab 4; tput setaf 7 command at the beginning of the function, so it only runs 1 time, and that causes the -- SHMore -- prompt to have a blue background and bright white text. This is one of hundreds of functions I have in my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html">.bash_profile at http://www.askapache.com/">AskApache.com, but actually won't be included till the next update. If you can improve this in any way at all please let me know, I would be very grateful! ( Like one thing I want is to be able to continue to the next screen by pressing any key instead of now having to press enter to continue) Show Sample Output

This puts a clock in the top right of the terminal. This version doesn't use tput, but uses escape codes

tput setaf 1 && tput rev && seq -ws "___|" 81|fold -69|tr "0-9" "_" && tput sgr0 # (brick wall)

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

works on all unices. Show Sample Output

Gives not only date but also some interesting status about the System Show Sample Output

Replace the underscore with any other character. e.g. + or - or =

Unlike other methods that use pipes and exec software like tr or sed or subshells, this is an extremely fast way to print a line and will always be able to detect the terminal width or else defaults to 80. It uses bash builtins for printf and echo and works with printf that supports the non-POSIX `-v` option to store result to var instead of printing to stdout. Here it is in a function that lets you change the line character to use and the length with args, it also supports color escape sequences with the echo -e option. function L() { local l=; builtin printf -vl "%${2:-${COLUMNS:-`tput cols 2>&-||echo 80`}}s\n" && echo -e "${l// /${1:-=}}"; } With color: L "`tput setaf 3`=" 1. Use printf to store n space chars followed by a newline to an environment variable "l" where n is local environment variable from $COLUMNS if set, else it will use `tput cols` and if that fails it will default to 80. 2. If printf succeeds then echo `$l` that contains the chars, replacing all blank spaces with "-" (can be changed to anything you want). From: http://www.askapache.com/linux/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html http://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt.html Show Sample Output

Depending on the TERM, the terminfo version, ncurses version, etc.. you may be using a varied assortment of terminal escape codes. With this command you can easily find out exactly what is going on.. This is terminal escape zen! ( 2>&2 strace -f -F -e write -s 1000 sh -c 'echo -e "initc\nis2\ncnorm\nrmso\nsgr0" | tput -S' 2>&1 ) | grep -o '"\\[^"]*"' --color=always "\33]4;%p1%d;rgb:%p2%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p3%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p4%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X\33\\\33[!p\33[?3;4l\33[4l\33>\33[?12l\33[?25h\33[27m\33(B\33[m" Lets say you want to find out what you need to echo in order to get the text to blink.. echo -e "`tput blink`This will blink`tput sgr0` This wont" Now you can use this function instead of calling tput (tput is much smarter for portable code because it works differently depending on the current TERM, and tput -T anyterm works too.) to turn that echo into a much faster executing code. tput queries files, opens files, etc.. but echo is very strait and narrow. So now you can do this: echo -e "\33[5mThis will blink\33(B\33[m This wont" More at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

Using perl and tput, show all the colors with numbers that your actual $TERM can handle. If want to remove the numbers at beginning of new line, it should be something like this: perl -E 'say `tput setb $_`," "x `tput cols`, `tput sgr0` for 0 .. (`tput colors` - 1)'