Commands tagged ncurses (6)

  • Alias HEAD for automatic smart 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. ( http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash-power-prompt.html ) 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


    26
    alias head='head -n $((${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} - 2))'
    AskApache · 2010-04-08 22:37:06 7
  • Ultimate current directory usage command

    An NCurses version of the famous old 'du' unix command


    20
    ncdu
    nickwe · 2009-09-03 20:38:32 1
  • Print all 256 colors for testing TERM or for a quick reference

    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


    7
    ( 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; )
    AskApache · 2010-09-06 10:39:27 2
  • ncdu - ncurses disk usage

    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 3
  • Vlc ncurses mode browsing local directorys.


    2
    vlc -I ncurses <MEDIA_DIR>
    sputnick · 2010-02-01 22:47:54 0
  • Print all 256 colors for testing TERM or for a quick reference

    Basically, \033[ is a semi-portable unix escape character. It should work in linux, osx, bsd, etc. The first option is 38. This tells whatever is interpreting this (and this is merely convention) that a special color sequence follows. The next option is 5 which says that the next option will specify a color ? {0..256} of course. These options, as you can see, are separated by a single `;` and the entire escape sequence is followed by a mandatory `m`. The second escape sequence (following "COLOR") is simply to clear all terminal attributes (for our purposes, it clears color). This for loop is helpful for testing all 256 colors in a 256 console (note: this will not work in a standard Linux tty console) or to see which number corresponds to which color so that perhaps you can use it! Show Sample Output


    0
    for i in {0..256}; do echo -e "${i} \033[38;05;${i}m COLOR \033[0m"; done
    Benharper · 2015-12-17 23:49:42 0

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Check if running in an X session
If you want to display a dialog (using xdialog/kdialog/zenity) you need to make sure that you have a valid X session. Checks for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.

Recursively move folders/files and preserve their permissions and ownership perfectly

find and delete empty dirs, start in current working dir
A quick way to find and delete empty dirs, it starts in the current working directory. If you do find . -empty -type d you will see what could be removed, or to a test run.

Revert an SVN file to previous revision
Kudos to xakon.

Join lines
This command turns a multi-line file into a single line joined with <SOMETEXT>. To skip blank lines, use: $ perl -pe '(eof()||s/^\s*$//)||s/\n//g' file.txt

Edit a file inside a compressed archive without extracting it
If you vim a compressed file it will list all archive content, then you can pickup any of them for editing and saving. There you have the modified archive without any extra step. It supports many file types such as tar.gz, tgz, zip, etc.

Save your open windows to a file so they can be opened after you restart
This will save your open windows to a file (~/.windows). To start those applications: $ cat ~/.windows | while read line; do $line &; done Should work on any EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager. If you use DWM or another Window Manager not using EWMH or NetWM try this: $ xwininfo -root -children | grep '^ ' | grep -v children | grep -v '' | sed -n 's/^ *\(0x[0-9a-f]*\) .*/\1/p' | uniq | while read line; do xprop -id $line _NET_WM_PID | sed -n 's/.* = \([0-9]*\)$/\1/p'; done | uniq -u | grep -v '^$' | while read line; do ps -o cmd= $line; done > ~/.windows

easily find megabyte eating files or directories

find files beginning with filename* that do not include "string"
Inverse grep, to find files without the string

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