Commands using alias (240)

  • If you're running a command with a lot of output, this serves as a simple progress indicator. This avoids the need to use `/dev/null` for silencing. It works for any command that outputs lines, updates live (`fflush` avoids buffering), and is simple to understand. Show Sample Output


    7
    alias ...="awk '{fflush(); printf \".\"}' && echo \"\""
    lgarron · 2014-02-22 22:20:22 15
  • This is a simple command, but extremely useful. It's a quick way to search the file names in the current directory for a substring. Normally people use "ls *term*" but that requires the stars and is not case insensitive. Color (for both ls and grep) is an added bonus.


    6
    alias lg='ls --color=always | grep --color=always -i'
    kFiddle · 2009-04-11 23:15:12 8
  • It finds a SNMP OID too :-( Show Sample Output


    5
    alias ip4grep "grep -E '([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}'"
    azumakuniyuki · 2009-02-09 15:08:16 11
  • ifconfig can't properly display interface's name longer 9 symbols,also it can't show IPs added thru ip command, so 'ip' should be used instead. This alias properly shows long names, bond interfaces and all interface aliases. loopback interface is ignored, since its IP is obvious Show Sample Output


    5
    alias ips='ip a | awk '\''/inet /&&!/ lo/{print $NF,$2}'\'' | column -t'
    zolden · 2010-03-06 20:33:04 3
  • Place this in your .bashrc (or run it once) to set the `tasks` alias. Next time you enter `tasks` into a terminal, it will give you a list of all TODO and FIXME comments in the current directory and child directories, giving you a quick overview of what you still have to do!


    5
    alias tasks='grep --exclude-dir=.git -rEI "TODO|FIXME" . 2>/dev/null'
    joepie91 · 2013-10-17 16:40:10 28
  • Leave out pygmentize or `pip install pygments` first. Show Sample Output


    5
    alias pp='python -mjson.tool|pygmentize -l js'
    wires · 2014-05-22 10:29:44 11

  • 4
    alias counts=sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
    porges · 2009-02-05 08:24:02 519

  • 4
    alias lrt='ls -lart'
    lhb · 2009-02-16 11:19:29 119
  • Turn off almost all of dig's output except for what you'd see in a zone file. This can also be put into ~/.digrc. Show Sample Output


    4
    alias ds='dig +noauthority +noadditional +noqr +nostats +noidentify +nocmd +noquestion +nocomments'
    SaintAardvark · 2009-02-19 17:32:56 4
  • tired of switching to the console to check if some command has finished yet? if notify-send does not work on your box try this one... e.g. rsync -av -e /usr/bin/lsh $HOME slowconnection.bar:/mnt/backup ; z (now fire up X, do something useful, get notified if this stuff has finished).


    4
    alias z='zenity --info --text="You will not believe it, but your command has finished now! :-)" --display :0.0'
    bubo · 2009-08-03 16:38:29 6
  • In Bash, when defining an alias, one usually loses the completion related to the function used in that alias (that completion is usually defined in /etc/bash_completion using the complete builtin). It's easy to reuse the work done for that completion in order to have smart completion for our alias. That's what is done by this command line (that's only an example but it may be very easy to reuse). Note 1 : You can use given command line in a loop "for old in apt-get apt-cache" if you want to define aliases like that for many commands. Note 2 : You can put the output of the command directly in your .bashrc file (after the ". /etc/bash_completion") to always have the alias and its completion Show Sample Output


    4
    old='apt-get'; new="su-${old}"; command="sudo ${old}"; alias "${new}=${command}"; $( complete | sed -n "s/${old}$/${new}/p" ); alias ${new}; complete -p ${new}
    Josay · 2009-08-10 00:15:05 4
  • I use this alias in my bashrc. The --vi-keys option makes info use vi-like and less-like key bindings.


    4
    alias info='info --vi-keys'
    eightmillion · 2010-02-16 16:35:17 4
  • When debugging an ssh connection either to optimize your settings ie compression, ciphers, or more commonly for debugging an issue connecting, this alias comes in real handy as it's not easy to remember the '-o LogLevel=DEBUG3' argument, which adds a boost of debugging info not available with -vvv alone. Especially useful are the FD info, and the setup negotiation to create a cleaner, faster connection. Show Sample Output


    4
    alias sshv='ssh -vvv -o LogLevel=DEBUG3'
    AskApache · 2010-10-30 11:23:52 4
  • I didn't come up with this myself, but I always add this to my .bash_aliases file. It's essentially the same idea as running "sudo !!" except it's much easier to type. (You can't just alias "sudo !!", it doesn't really work for reasons I don't understand.) "fc" is a shell built-in for editing and re-running previous commands. The -l flag tells it to display the line rather than edit it, and the -n command tells it to omit the line number. -1 tells it to print the previous line. For more detail: help fc


    4
    alias please='sudo $(fc -ln -1)'
    suspenderguy · 2018-06-13 20:20:19 249

  • 3
    alias beep='echo -en "\007"'
    adavies42 · 2009-02-05 10:14:24 33
  • E.g. Useful for hiding spoilers in reviews, etc. Show Sample Output


    3
    alias rot13='perl -pe "y/A-Za-z/N-ZA-Mn-za-m/;"'
    abcde · 2009-02-06 14:22:43 13
  • Use the aliased command 'nsl'


    3
    alias nsl 'netstat -f inet | grep -v CLOSE_WAIT | cut -c-6,21-94 | tail +2'
    mnikhil · 2009-02-07 18:54:12 10
  • The pstack command prints a stack trace of running processes without needing to attach a debugger, but what about core files? The answer, of course, is to use this command. Usage: gdbbt program corefile


    3
    alias gdbbt="gdb -q -n -ex bt -batch"
    TeacherTiger · 2009-11-10 22:56:59 658
  • This uses mpg123 to convert the files to wav before burning, but you can use mplayer or mencoder or ffmpeg or lame with the --decode option, or whatever you like.


    3
    alias burnaudiocd='mkdir ./temp && for i in *.[Mm][Pp]3;do mpg123 -w "./temp/${i%%.*}.wav" "$i";done;cdrecord -pad ./temp/* && rm -r ./temp'
    eightmillion · 2009-11-21 19:57:18 3
  • I use this command (PS1) to show a list bash prompt's special characters. I tested it against A flavor of Red Hat Linux and Mac OS X Show Sample Output


    3
    alias PS1="man bash | sed -n '/ASCII bell/,/end a sequence/p'"
    haivu · 2010-01-15 23:39:28 3
  • if you dont want to alias also then you can do killall rapidly_spawning_process ; !! ; !! ; !!


    3
    alias a=" killall rapidly_spawning_process"; a; a; a;
    raj77_in · 2010-05-20 02:33:28 3
  • Once you get into advanced/optimized scripts, functions, or cli usage, you will use the sort command alot. The options are difficult to master/memorize however, and when you use sort commands as much as I do (some examples below), it's useful to have the help available with a simple alias. I love this alias as I never seem to remember all the options for sort, and I use sort like crazy (much better than uniq for example). # Sorts by file permissions find . -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %p\n' | sort -k1 -r -g -bS 20% 00761 drwxrw---x ./tmp 00755 drwxr-xr-x . 00701 drwx-----x ./askapache-m 00644 -rw-r--r-- ./.htaccess # Shows uniq history fast history 1000 | sed 's/^[0-9 ]*//' | sort -fubdS 50% exec bash -lxv export TERM=putty-256color Taken from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output


    3
    alias sorth='sort --help|sed -n "/^ *-[^-]/s/^ *\(-[^ ]* -[^ ]*\) *\(.*\)/\1:\2/p"|column -ts":"'
    AskApache · 2010-06-10 21:30:31 9
  • USAGE: $ sudor your command This command uses a dirty hack with history, so be sure you not turned it off. WARNING! This command behavior differ from other commands. It more like text macro, so you shouldn't use it in subshells, non-interactive sessions, other functions/aliases and so on. You shouldn't pipe into sudor (any string that prefixes sudor will be removed), but if you really want, use this commands: proceed_sudo () { sudor_command="`HISTTIMEFORMAT=\"\" history 1 | sed -r -e 's/^.*?sudor//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`" ; pre_sudor_command="`history 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5- | sed -r -e 's/sudor.*$//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`"; if [ -n "${pre_sudor_command/ */}" ] ; then eval "${pre_sudor_command%| *}" | sudo sh -c "$sudor_command"; else sudo sh -c "$sudor_command" ;fi ;}; alias sudor="proceed_sudo # "


    3
    proceed_sudo () { sudor_command="`HISTTIMEFORMAT=\"\" history 1 | sed -r -e 's/^.*?sudor//' -e 's/\"/\\\"/g'`" ; sudo sh -c "$sudor_command"; }; alias sudor="proceed_sudo # "
    mechmind · 2010-06-29 14:56:29 5
  • If a tmux session is already running attach it, otherwise create a new one. Useful if you often forget about running tmuxes (or just don't care)


    3
    alias ltmux="if tmux has; then tmux attach; else tmux new; fi"
    tensorpudding · 2010-07-19 01:27:47 5
  • Bash alias for easy irssi within screen, attempts to attach to existing irssi session, if one exists, otherwise creates one - Including wipe for when system reboots and leaves "dead" session.


    3
    alias irssi="screen -wipe; screen -A -U -x -R -S irssi irssi"
    djsmiley2k · 2010-12-15 09:10:53 3
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Stoppable sleep
A nice way to interrupt a sleep with a signal.

Copy an element from the previous command
'n' is a non-negative integer. Using 0 will expand to the name of the previous command.

Annoying PROMPT_COMMAND animation
unset PROMPT_COMMAND to disable.

Use /dev/full to test language I/O-failsafety
The Linux /dev/full file simulates a "disk full" condition, and can be used to verify how a program handles this situation. In particular, several programming language implementations do not print error diagnostics (nor exit with error status) when I/O errors like this occur, unless the programmer has taken additional steps. That is, simple code in these languages does not fail safely. In addition to Perl, C, C++, Tcl, and Lua (for some functions) also appear not to fail safely.

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed
Removes ANSI color and end of line codes to the [{attr1};...;{attrn}m format.

Terminal Escape Code Zen - Strace and Tput
Depending on the TERM, the terminfo version, ncurses version, etc.. you may be using a varied assortment of terminal escape codes. With this command you can easily find out exactly what is going on.. This is terminal escape zen! $ ( 2>&2 strace -f -F -e write -s 1000 sh -c 'echo -e "initc\nis2\ncnorm\nrmso\nsgr0" | tput -S' 2>&1 ) | grep -o '"\\[^"]*"' --color=always "\33]4;%p1%d;rgb:%p2%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p3%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p4%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X\33\\\33[!p\33[?3;4l\33[4l\33>\33[?12l\33[?25h\33[27m\33(B\33[m" Lets say you want to find out what you need to echo in order to get the text to blink.. $ echo -e "`tput blink`This will blink`tput sgr0` This wont" Now you can use this function instead of calling tput (tput is much smarter for portable code because it works differently depending on the current TERM, and tput -T anyterm works too.) to turn that echo into a much faster executing code. tput queries files, opens files, etc.. but echo is very strait and narrow. So now you can do this: $ echo -e "\33[5mThis will blink\33(B\33[m This wont" More at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

Show a curses based menu selector
Not so much handy by itself, but very nice in shell scripts. This makes you a handy ncurses based checklist. Much like terminal installers, just use the arrow keys and hit 'Space' to adjust the selections. Returns all selected tags as strings, with no newline at the end. So, your output will be something like: "one" "two" "three" "four" "etc" For those who prefer bash expansion over gratuitious typing: $ whiptail --checklist "Simple checkbox menu" 12 35 3 $(echo {one,two,three,four}" '' 0"} ) Things to note: The height must includes the outer border and padding: add 7 to however many items you want to show up at the same time. If the status is 1, it will be selected by default. anything else, will be deselected.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }


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