The biggest advantage of this over the functions is that it is portable.

How often do you make a directory (or series of directories) and then change into it to do whatever? 99% of the time that is what I do. This BASH function 'md' will make the directory path then immediately change to the new directory. By using the 'mkdir -p' switch, the intermediate directories are created as well if they do not exist. Show Sample Output

Uses the last argument of the last executed command, and gets the directory name from it. Use $!:t for the filename alone, without the dirname. Show Sample Output

Searches backwards through your command-history for the typed text. Repeatedly hitting Ctrl-R will search progressively further. Return invokes the command. Show Sample Output

After executing a command with multiple arguments like cp ./temp/test.sh ~/prog/ifdown.sh you can paste any argument of the previous command to the console, like ls -l ALT+1+. is equivalent to ls -l ./temp/test.sh ALT+0+. stands for command itself ('ls' in this case) Simple ALT+. cycles through last arguments of previous commands.

for example if you did a: ls -la /bin/ls then ls !$ is equivalent to doing a ls /bin/ls

Can be used for command line parameters too. If you have a more complicated way of entering values (validation, GUI, ...), then write a function i.e. EnterValue() that echoes the value and then you can write: param=${param:-$(EnterValue)}

Useful for use in other scripts for renaming, testing for extensions, etc. Show Sample Output

Use this BASH trick to create a variable containing the TAB character and pass it as the argument to sort, join, cut and other commands which don't understand the \t notation. sort -t $'\t' ... join -t $'\t' ... cut -d $'\t' ... Show Sample Output

Yes, it's useless.

hit BACKSPACE more than once to delete more words Show Sample Output

worse alternative to ctrl+r: grep the history removing duplicates without sorting (case insensitive search). Show Sample Output

Tested with bash v4.1.5 on ubuntu 10.10 Limitations: as written above, only works for programs with no file extention (i.e 'proggy', but not 'proggy.sh') because \eb maps to readine function backward-word rather then shell-backward-word (which is unbinded by default on ubuntu), and correspondingly for \ef. if you're willing to have Ctrl-f and Ctrl-g taken up too , you can insert the following lines into ~/.inputrc, in which case invoking Ctrl-e will do the right thing both for "proggy" and "proggy.sh". -- cut here -- \C-f:shell-backward-word \C-g:shell-forward-word "\C-e":"\C-f`which \C-g`\e\C-e" -- cut here -- Show Sample Output

Actually $! is an internal variable containing PID of the last job in background. More info: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/internalvariables.html#PIDVARREF Using $! for job control: possibly_hanging_job & { sleep ${TIMEOUT}; eval 'kill -9 $!' &> /dev/null; }

combines mkdir and cd added quotes around $_, thanx to flatcap! Show Sample Output

For those files in current folder that would be shown in `ls *ext`, for some extension ext, move/rename that file removing the .ext suffix from the file name. It uses Bash's parameter substitution, as seen in http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/parameter-substitution.html#PCTPATREF (for analog use in prefix, see http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/parameter-substitution.html#PSOREX2 )

With counter format [001, 002, ..., 999] , nice with pictures or wallpapers collections.