This is freaking sweet!!! Here is the full alias, (I didn't want to cause display problems on commandlinefu.com's homepage): alias tarred='( ( D=`builtin pwd`; F=$(date +$HOME/`sed "s,[/ ],#,g" <<< ${D/${HOME}/}`#-%F.tgz); S=$SECONDS; tar --ignore-failed-read --transform "s,^${D%/*},`date +${D%/*}.%F`,S" -czPf "$"F "$D" && logger -s "Tarred $D to $F in $(($SECONDS-$S)) seconds" ) & )' Creates a .tgz archive of whatever directory it is run from, in the background, detached from current shell so if you logout it will still complete. Also, you can run this as many times as you want, if the archive .tgz already exists, it just moves it to a numbered backup '--backup=numbered'. The coolest part of this is the transformation performed by tar and sed so that the archive file names are automatically created, and when you extract the archive file it is completely safe thanks to the transform command. If you archive lets say /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup/ it will create the archive /home/#home#tombdigger#new-stuff-to-backup#-2010-11-18.tgz Then when you extract it, like tar -xvzf #home#tombdigger#new-stuff-to-backup#-2010-11-18.tgz instead of overwriting an existing /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup/ directory, it will extract to /home/tombdigger/new-stuff-to-backup.2010-11-18/ Basically, the tar archive filename is the PWD with all '/' replaced with '#', and the date is appended to the name so that multiple archives are easily managed. This example saves all archives to your $HOME/archive-name.tgz, but I have a $BKDIR variable with my backup location for each shell user, so I just replaced HOME with BKDIR in the alias. So when I ran this in /opt/askapache/SOURCE/lockfile-progs-0.1.11/ the archive was created at /askapache-bk/#opt#askapache#SOURCE#lockfile-progs-0.1.11#-2010-11-18.tgz Upon completion, uses the universal logger tool to output its completion to syslog and stderr (printed to your terminal), just remove that part if you don't want it, or just remove the '-s ' option from logger to keep the logs only in syslog and not on your terminal. Here's how my syslog server recorded this.. 2010-11-18T00:44:13-05:00 gravedigger.askapache.com (127.0.0.5) [user] [notice] (logger:) Tarred /opt/askapache/SOURCE/lockfile-progs-0.1.11 to /askapache-bk/tarred/#opt#SOURCE#lockfile-progs-0.1.11#-2010-11-18.tgz in 4 seconds Caveats Really this is very robust and foolproof, the only issues I ever have with it (I've been using this for years on my web servers) is if you run it in a directory and then a file changes in that directory, you get a warning message and your archive might have a problem for the changed file. This happens when running this in a logs directory, a temp dir, etc.. That's the only issue I've ever had, really nothing more than a heads up. Advanced: This is a simple alias, and very useful as it works on basically every linux box with semi-current tar and GNU coreutils, bash, and sed.. But if you want to customize it or pass parameters (like a dir to backup instead of pwd), check out this function I use.. this is what I created the alias from BTW, replacing my aa_status function with logger, and adding $SECONDS runtime instead of using tar's --totals function tarred () { local GZIP='--fast' PWD=${1:-`pwd`} F=$(date +${BKDIR}/%m-%d-%g-%H%M-`sed -u 's/[\/\ ]/#/g' [[ ! -r "$PWD" ]] && echo "Bad permissions for $PWD" 1>&2 && return 2; ( ( tar --totals --ignore-failed-read --transform "s@^${PWD%/*}@`date +${PWD%/*}.%m-%d-%g`@S" -czPf $F $PWD && aa_status "Completed Tarp of $PWD to $F" ) & ) } #From my .bash_profile http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

I find it useless but definitely simpler than #9230 Show Sample Output

Print all lines between two line numbers This command uses sed(1) to print all lines between two known line numbers in a file. Useful for seeing output in a log file, where the line numbers are known. The above command will print all lines between, and including, lines 3 and 6. Show Sample Output

will purge: only installed apps: /^ii/!d avoiding current kernel stuff: /'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d using app names: s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/ avoiding stuff without a version number: /[0-9]/!d

If BREs can be used, this sed version will also get the job done.

Will edit *.db files in the same directory with todays date. Useful for doing a mass update to domains on a nameserver, adding spf records, etc. Looks for a string starting with 200 or 201 followed by 7 numbers, and replaces with todays date. This won't overwrite Ip's but i would still do some double checking after running this. Make sure your server's date is correct, otherwise insert your own serial number. rndc reload should usually follow this command.

Here is the full function (got trunctated), which is much better and works for multiple queries. function cmdfu () { local t=~/cmdfu; until [[ -z $1 ]]; do echo -e "\n# $1 {{{1" >> $t; curl -s "commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/$1/`echo -n $1|base64`/plaintext" | sed '1,2d;s/^#.*/& {{{2/g' | tee -a $t > $t.c; sed -i "s/^# $1 {/# $1 - `grep -c '^#' $t.c` {/" $t; shift; done; vim -u /dev/null -c "set ft=sh fdm=marker fdl=1 noswf" -M $t; rm $t $t.c } Searches commandlinefu for single/multiple queries and displays syntax-highlighted, folded, and numbered results in vim. Show Sample Output

A powerfull way to rename file using sed groups. & stand for the matched expression. \1 referes to the first group between parenthesis. \2 to the second. Show Sample Output

I modify 4077 and marssi commandline to simplify it and skip an error when parsing the first line of lsmod (4077). Also, it's more concise and small now. I skip using xargs ( not required here ). This is only for GNU sed. For thoses without GNU sed, use that : modinfo $(lsmod | awk 'NR>1 {print $1}') | sed -e '/^dep/s/$/\n/g' -e '/^file/b' -e '/^desc/b' -e '/^dep/b' -e d

I took matthewbauer's cool one-liner and rewrote it as a shell function that returns all the suggestions or outputs "OK" if it doesn't find anything wrong. It should work on ksh, zsh, and bash. Users that don't have tee can leave that part off like this: spellcheck(){ typeset y=$@;curl -sd "<spellrequest><text>$y</text></spellrequest>" https://google.com/tbproxy/spell|sed -n '/s="[1-9]"/{s/<[^>]*>/ /g;s/\t/ /g;s/ *\(.*\)/Suggestions: \1\n/g;p}';} Show Sample Output

Use curl and sed to shorten an URL using goo.gl without any other api Show Sample Output

I've been auto-generating some complex GnuPlots; with multiplots the first plot of each group needs to be a 'plot' whereas the others need to be 'replots' to allow overplotting/autoscaling/etc to work properly. This is used to replace only the first instance of 'replot'. Show Sample Output

This will comment out a line, specified by line number, in a given file.

In this simple example the command will add a comma to the end of every line except the last. I found this really useful when programatically constructing sql scripts. See sample output for example. Show Sample Output

The original was a little bit too complicated for me. This one does not use any variables.

If you're going to use od, here's how to suppress the labels at the beginning. Also, it doesn't output the \x, hence the sed command at the end. Remove it for space separated hex values instead Show Sample Output

This command outputs a table of sighting opportunities for the International Space Station. Find the URL for your city here: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ Show Sample Output

Using the sed -i (inline), you can replace the beginning of the first line of a file without redirecting the output to a temporary location.

Show the current load of the CPU as a percentage. Read the load from /proc/loadavg and convert it using sed: Strip everything after the first whitespace: sed -e 's/ .*//' Delete the decimal point: sed -e 's/\.//' Remove leading zeroes: sed -e 's/^0*//' Show Sample Output

will show: installed linux headers, image, or modules: /^ii/!d avoiding current kernel: /'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d only application names: s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/ avoiding stuff without a version number: /[0-9]/!d Show Sample Output

Limited, but useful construct to extract text embedded in XML tags. This will only work if bar is all on one line. If nobody posts an alternative for the multiline sed version, I'll figure it out later...

The coolest way I've found to backup a wordpress mysql database using encryption, and using local variables created directly from the wp-config.php file so that you don't have to type them- which would allow someone sniffing your terminal or viewing your shell history to see your info. I use a variation of this for my servers that have hundreds of wordpress installs and databases by using a find command for the wp-config.php file and passing that through xargs to my function. Show Sample Output

xargs deals badly with special characters (such as space, ' and "). To see the problem try this: touch important_file touch 'not important_file' ls not* | xargs rm Parallel https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/ does not have this problem.