If you have used bash for any scripting, you've used the date command alot. It's perfect for using as a way to create filename's dynamically within aliases,functions, and commands like below.. This is actually an update to my first alias, since a few commenters (below) had good observations on what was wrong with my first command. # creating a date-based ssh-key for askapache.github.com ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/`date +git-$USER@$HOSTNAME-%m-%d-%g` -C 'webmaster@askapache.com' # /home/gpl/.ssh/git-gplnet@askapache.github.com-04-22-10 # create a tar+gzip backup of the current directory tar -czf $(date +$HOME/.backups/%m-%d-%g-%R-`sed -u 's/\//#/g' <<< $PWD`.tgz) . # tar -czf /home/gpl/.backups/04-22-10-01:13-#home#gpl#.rr#src.tgz . I personally find myself having to reference date --help quite a bit as a result. So this nice alias saves me a lot of time. This is one bdash mofo. Works in sh and bash (posix), but will likely need to be changed for other shells due to the parameter substitution going on.. Just extend the sed command, I prefer sed to pretty much everything anyways.. but it's always preferable to put in the extra effort to go for as much builtin use as you can. Otherwise it's not a top one-liner, it's a lazyboy recliner. Here's the old version: alias dateh='date --help|sed "/^ *%%/,/^ *%Z/!d;s/ \+/ /g"|while read l;do date "+ %${l/% */}_${l/% */}_${l#* }";done|column -s_ -t' This trick from my [ http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html bash_profile ] Show Sample Output

Define a function vert () { echo $1 | grep -o '.'; } Use it to print some column headers paste <(vert several) <(vert parallel) <(vert vertical) <(vert "lines of") <(vert "text can") <(vert "be used") <(vert "for labels") <(vert "for columns") <(vert "of numbers") Show Sample Output

The above is just a prove of concept based around the nested bash substitution. This could be useful in situations where you're in a directory with many filetypes but you only want to convert a few. for f in *.bmp *.jpg *.tga; do convert $f ${f%.*}.png; done or you can use ls | egrep to get more specific... but be warned, files with spaces will cause a ruckus with expansion but the bash for loop uses a space delimited list. for f in $(ls | egrep "bmp$|jpg$|tga$"); do convert $f ${f%.*}.png; done I'm guessing some people will still prefer doing it the sed way but I thought the concept of this one was pretty neat. It will help me remember bash substitutions a little better :-P Show Sample Output

A bitcoin "brainwallet" is a secret passphrase you carry in the "wallet" of your brain. The Bitcoin Brainwallet Private Key Calculator calculates the standard base58 encoded bitcoin private key from your "brainwallet" passphrase. The private key is the most important bitcoin number. All other numbers can be derived from it. This command uses 3 other functions - all 3 are defined on my user page: 1) brainwallet_exponent() - search for Bitcoin Brainwallet Exponent Calculator 2) brainwallet_checksum() - search for Bitcoin Brainwallet Exponent Calculator 3) b58encode() - search for Bitcoin Brainwallet Base58 Encoder Do make sure you use really strong, unpredictable passphrases (30+ characters)! http:brainwallet.org can be used to check the accuracy of this calculator. Show Sample Output

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

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 Show Sample Output

A bitcoin "brainwallet" is a secret passphrase you carry in your brain. The Bitcoin Brainwallet Exponent Calculator is the second of three functions needed to calculate a bitcoin PRIVATE key. Roughly, checksum is the first 8 hex digits of sha256(sha256(0x80+sha256(passphrase))) Note that this is a bash function, which means you have to type its name to invoke it Show Sample Output

There is a common command for outputting a field or list of fields from each line in a file. Why wouldn't you just use cut?

Like 7171, but fixed typo, uses fewer variables, and even more cryptic! Show Sample Output

cryptic version Show Sample Output

The above is an example of grabbing only the first column. You can define the start and end points specifically by chacater position using the following command: while read l; do echo ${l:10:40}; done < three-column-list.txt > column-c10-c40.txt Of course, it doesn't have to be a column, or extraction, it can be replacement while read l; do echo ${l/foo/bar}; done < list-with-foo.txt > list-with-bar.txt Read more about parameter expansion here: http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/pe Think of this as an alternative to awk or sed for file operations

eg: Already running cmd sleep 120 Substitution cmd c=$(pgrep sleep) && sleep 5 && kill $c

See "Parameter Expansion" in the bash manpage. They refer to this as "Use Alternate Value", but we're including the var in the at alternative. Show Sample Output

If you want all the URLs from all the sessions, you can use : perl -lne 'print for /url":"\K[^"]+/g' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/sessionstore.js Thanks to tybalt89 ( idea of the "for" statement ). For perl purists, there's JSON and File::Slurp modules, buts that's not installed by default.