Commands tagged xargs sorted by votes

Commands tagged xargs (148)

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Find and delete thunderbird's msf files to make your profile work quickly again.

The thunderbird message datastores get corrupt some times causing random failures, compaction to fail and general suck in thunderbird. Removing them causes thunderbird to rebuild the indexes and makes things quick again.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find ~/.thunderbird/*.default/ -name *.msf | sed 's/ /\\ /g' | xargs rm {} \;

allrightname · 2010-06-04 12:35:24 7
find names of files ending in *log that have both foo and bar

Uses xargs to call the second grep with the first grep's results as arguments
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

grep -l bar *.log | xargs grep -l foo

dlebauer · 2011-01-10 19:54:46 4
Reorder file with max 100 file per folder

Take a folder full of files and split it into smaller folders containing a maximum number of files. In this case, 100 files per directory. find creates the list of files xargs breaks up the list into groups of 100 for each group, create a directory and copy in the files Note: This command won't work if there is whitespace in the filenames (but then again, neither do the alternative commands :-)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

files -type f | xargs -n100 | while read l; do mkdir $((++f)); cp $l $f; done

flatcap · 2011-02-15 23:15:16 5
Convert one's Java source file encoding

One of my friends committed his code in the encoding of GB2312, which broke the build job. I have to find his code and convert.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -name "*.java" -type f -perm +600 -print | xargs -I _ sh -c 'grep -q hexianmao _ && iconv -f gb2312 -t utf8 -o _ -c _ '

Sunng · 2011-03-08 13:02:25 8
Clean-up release directories keeping the only the latest two

Deletes capistrano-style release directories (except that there are dashes between the YYYY-MM-DD) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
user@server:~/apps/appname/releases$ ls
2010-12-02-121502  2010-12-01-215457
```
-1

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -Pv "^.$" | sort -rn --field-separator="-" | sed -n '3,$p' | xargs rm -rf

wilmoore · 2011-03-08 17:38:26 7
use ImageMagik to convert tint (hue rotation) of an icon set directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

mogrify -modulate 100,100,70 ../../icons/32x32/*.png

houghi · 2011-06-13 15:11:16 4
Find files and list them sorted by modification time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find -type f | xargs ls -1tr

unixmonkey50727 · 2013-03-20 16:43:54 5
Recursively change permissions on files, leave directories alone.

xargs is a more elegant approach to executing a command on find results then -exec as -exec is meant as a filtering flag.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find /var/www/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

FiloSottile · 2013-03-28 11:10:30 7
Randomize lines (opposite of | sort)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls -1 | xargs ruby -e'puts ARGV.shuffle'

jacaetevha · 2014-01-17 17:42:08 8
Remove all files previously extracted from a tar(.gz) file.

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

tar -tf <file.tar.gz> | parallel rm

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 08:28:16 4
add all files not under version control to repository

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

svn status |grep '\?' |awk '{print $2}'| parallel -Xj1 svn add

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 08:47:54 4
archive all files containing local changes (svn)

xargs deals badly with special characters (such as space, ' and "). In this case if you have a file called '12" record'. Parallel https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/ does not have this problem. Both solutions work bad if the number of files is more than the allowed line length of the shell.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

svn st | cut -c 9- | parallel -X tar -czvf ../backup.tgz

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 11:43:16 4
List top ten files/directories sorted by size

If a directory name contains space xargs will do the wrong thing. Parallel https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/ deals better with that. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
33M     a b
17M     libxnee
3.6M    doc
3.0M    gnee
```
-2

du -s * | sort -nr | head | cut -f2 | parallel -k du -sh

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 12:59:14 7
Edit all "text" files (exclude binary and directories) in the current directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ls . | xargs file | grep text | sed "s/$.*$:.*/\1/" | xargs gedit

matthewbauer · 2010-02-08 02:06:40 7
find files containing specifc pattern on filename and specific patternts in its content, open all in textmate
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

find . -name "*noticia*" -name "*jhtm*" -name "*.tpl" -exec grep -li "id=\"col-direita\"" '{}' \; | xargs -n1 mate

irae · 2010-09-18 02:55:40 5
remove unneeded configuration files in debian

This will, for an application that has already been removed but had its configuration left behind, purge that configuration from the system. To test it out first, you can remove the last -y, and it will show you what it will purge without actually doing it. I mean it never hurts to check first, "just in case." ;)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

dpkg-query -l| grep -v "ii " | grep "rc " | awk '{print $2" "}' | tr -d "\n" | xargs aptitude purge -y

thepicard · 2009-04-28 19:25:53 11
backup and remove files with access time older than 5 days.

This deals nicely with files having special characters in the file name (space ' or "). Parallel is from https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

tar -zcvpf backup_`date +"%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`.tar.gz `find <target> -atime +5 -type f` 2> /dev/null | parallel -X rm -f

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 12:41:41 4
Kill multiple instances of a running process

Find and kill multiple instances of a process with one simple command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

pgrep rouge-process | xargs sudo kill -9

mheadd · 2010-05-09 22:30:05 7
Revert all modified files in an SVN repo
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

svn revert .

zhenggc1 · 2013-03-13 06:07:42 5
use ImageMagik to convert tint (hue rotation) of an icon set directory.

see http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/color_mods/#modulate
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

/bin/ls *.png | xargs -l1 -I {} convert {} -modulate 100,100,70 ../../icons/32x32/{}

hute37 · 2011-06-13 14:35:10 5
Poll and print end of lates modified file

Watches for file modifications in the current directory and tails the file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

watch 'ls -tr1 | tail -n1 | xargs tail'

batandwa · 2013-05-09 11:37:59 11
Copy all images to external hard-drive
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

ls *.jpg | xargs -n1 -i cp {} /external-hard-drive/directory

techie · 2013-05-09 08:33:01 11
Find broken symlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

find . -type l | xargs file | grep broken

kineticrick · 2011-04-07 22:58:02 5
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SSH Auto-login with password

You need to install "sshpass" for this to work. apt-get install sshpass

A snooze button for xmms2 alarm clock

you can also run "xmms2 pause & at now +5min

Dump HTTP header using wget

Let me suggest using wget for obtaining the HTTP header only as the last resort because it generates considerable textual overhead. The first ellipsis of the sample output stands for Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists. --2009-03-31 20:42:46-- http://www.example.com/ Resolving www.example.com... 208.77.188.166 Connecting to www.example.com|208.77.188.166|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... and the second one looks for Length: 438 [text/html] Remote file exists and could contain further links, but recursion is disabled -- not retrieving.

Get backup from remote host, then expand in current directory using tar

Get the Volume labels all bitlocker volumes had before being encrypted

Get information of volume labels of bitlocker volumes, even if they are encrypted and locked (no access to filesystem, no password provided). Note that the volume labels can have spaces, but only if you name then before encryption. Renaming a bitlocker partition after being encrypted does not have the same effect as doing it before.

strips the first field of each line where the delimiter is the first ascii character

Bitcoin Brainwallet Exponent Calculator

A bitcoin "brainwallet" is a secret passphrase you carry in your brain. The Bitcoin Brainwallet Exponent Calculator is one of three functions needed to calculate the bitcoin PRIVATE key. Roughly, the formula is exponent = sha256 (passphrase) Note that this is a bash function, which means you have to type its name to invoke it. You can check the accuracy of the results here http://brainwallet.org

Faster find and move using the find and xargs commands. Almost as fast as locate.

Only tested on Linux Ubunty Hardy. Works when file names have spaces. The "-maxdepth 2" limits the find search to the current directory and the next one deeper in this example. This was faster on my system because find was searching every directory before the current directory without the -maxdepth option. Almost as fast as locate when used as above. Must use double quotes around pattern to handle spaces in file names. -print0 is used in combination with xargs -0. Those are zeros not "O"s. For xargs, -I is used to replace the following "{}" with the incoming file-list items from find. Echo just prints to the command line what is happening with mv. mv needs "{}" again so it knows what you are moving from. Then end with the move destination. Some other versions may only require one "{}" in the move command and not after the -I, however this is what worked for me on Ubuntu 8.04. Some like to use -type f in the find command to limit the type.

Get My Public IP Address

Randomly run command

Randomly decide whether to run a command, or fail. It's useful for testing purposes. . Usage: ran PERCENTAGE COMMAND [ARGS] Note: In this version the percentage is required. . This is like @sesom42 and @snipertyler's commands but in a USABLE form. . e.g. In your complicated shell script, put "ran 99" before a crucial component. Now, it will fail 1% of the time allowing you to test the failure code-path. $ ran 99 my_complex_program arg1 arg2

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Commands tagged xargs (148)

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