Commands using awk (1,418)

  • Display connections histogram

    Displays a connection histogram of active tcp connections. Works even better under an alias. Thanks @Areis1 for sharing this one.


    7
    netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | awk '\''{print $5}'\'' | awk -F: '\''{print $1}'\'' | sort | uniq -c | awk '\''{ printf("%s\t%s\t",$2,$1); for (i = 0; i < $1; i++) {printf("*")}; print ""}'\''
    mramos · 2010-07-09 00:25:45 42
  • Remove all unused kernels with apt-get

    Note the double space: "...^ii␣␣linux-image-2..." Like 5813, but fixes two bugs: [1]This leaves the meta-packages 'linux-headers-generic' and 'linux-image-generic' alone so that automatic upgrades work correctly in the future. [2]Kernels newer than the currently running one are left alone (this can happen if you didn't reboot after installing a new kernel). I'm bummed that this took 228 characters. I'd like to see a simpler version. Show Sample Output


    7
    aptitude remove $(dpkg -l|awk '/^ii linux-image-2/{print $2}'|sed 's/linux-image-//'|awk -v v=`uname -r` 'v>$0'|sed 's/-generic//'|awk '{printf("linux-headers-%s\nlinux-headers-%s-generic\nlinux-image-%s-generic\n",$0,$0,$0)}')
    __ · 2010-12-11 11:38:15 7
  • easily strace all your apache processes

    This one-liner will use strace to attach to all of the currently running apache processes output and piped from the initial "ps auxw" command into some awk. Show Sample Output


    7
    ps auxw | grep sbin/apache | awk '{print"-p " $2}' | xargs strace
    px · 2011-03-14 21:45:22 34
  • Load average + API google chart

    limite = threshold Show Sample Output


    7
    limite="5";load5=$(awk '{print $1}' /proc/loadavg);echo "http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chxr=0,0,5&chxt=y&chs=700x240&cht=gm&chds=0,"$limite"&chd=t:"$load5"&chl="$load5"&chtt=$(hostname)+load+average"
    ncaio · 2011-04-02 17:55:24 8
  • Check how far along (in %) your program is in a file

    Imagine you've started a long-running process that involves piping data, but you forgot to add the progress-bar option to a command. e.g. xz -dc bigdata.xz | complicated-processing-program > summary . This command uses lsof to see how much data xz has read from the file. lsof -o0 -o -Fo FILENAME Display offsets (-o), in decimal (-o0), in parseable form (-Fo) This will output something like: . p12607 f3 o0t45187072 . Process id (p), File Descriptor (f), Offset (o) . We stat the file to get its size stat -c %s FILENAME . Then we plug the values into awk. Split the line at the letter t: -Ft Define a variable for the file's size: -s=$(stat...) Only work on the offset line: /^o/ . Note this command was tested using the Linux version of lsof. Because it uses lsof's batch option (-F) it may be portable. . Thanks to @unhammer for the brilliant idea. Show Sample Output


    7
    F=bigdata.xz; lsof -o0 -o -Fo $F | awk -Ft -v s=$(stat -c %s $F) '/^o/{printf("%d%%\n", 100*$2/s)}'
    flatcap · 2015-09-19 22:22:43 18
  • Count the number of queries to a MySQL server


    6
    echo "SHOW PROCESSLIST\G" | mysql -u root -p | grep "Info:" | awk -F":" '{count[$NF]++}END{for(i in count){printf("%d: %s\n", count[i], i)}}' | sort -n
    bpfx · 2009-02-05 14:24:20 40
  • Display any tcp connections to apache

    Sometimes apache will get stuck in an established state where you can't get a list of the connecting IP's from mod_status... not a good thing when you need to ban an abusive ip.


    6
    for i in `ps aux | grep httpd | awk '{print $2}'`; do lsof -n -p $i | grep ESTABLISHED; done;
    Shadow · 2009-02-05 17:50:52 67
  • Octal ls

    Do ls with permissions written in octal form. Show Sample Output


    6
    ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'
    iArno · 2009-02-13 19:20:54 21
  • Display the standard deviation of a column of numbers with awk


    6
    awk '{sum+=$1; sumsq+=$1*$1} END {print sqrt(sumsq/NR - (sum/NR)**2)}' file.dat
    kaan · 2009-03-24 21:56:40 9
  • List top ten files/directories sorted by size


    6
    du -sb *|sort -nr|head|awk '{print $2}'|xargs du -sh
    srand · 2009-05-12 19:58:45 9
  • Hostname tab-completion for ssh

    This is meant for the bash shell. Put this function in your .profile and you'll be able to use tab-completion for sshing any host which is in your known_hosts file. This assumes that your known_hosts file is located at ~/.ssh/known_hosts. The "complete" command should go on a separate line as such: function autoCompleteHostname() { local hosts=($(awk '{print $1}' ~/.ssh/known_hosts | cut -d, -f1)); local cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}; COMPREPLY=($(compgen -W '${hosts[@]}' -- $cur )) } complete -F autoCompleteHostname ssh


    6
    function autoCompleteHostname() { local hosts; local cur; hosts=($(awk '{print $1}' ~/.ssh/known_hosts | cut -d, -f1)); cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}; COMPREPLY=($(compgen -W '${hosts[@]}' -- $cur )) } complete -F autoCompleteHostname ssh
    sbisordi · 2009-05-17 23:12:34 10
  • Check which files are opened by Firefox then sort by largest size.

    Check which files are opened by Firefox then sort by largest size (in MB). You can see all files opened by just replacing grep to "/". Useful if you'd like to debug and check which extensions or files are taking too much memory resources in Firefox. Show Sample Output


    6
    FFPID=$(pidof firefox-bin) && lsof -p $FFPID | awk '{ if($7>0) print ($7/1024/1024)" MB -- "$9; }' | grep ".mozilla" | sort -rn
    josue · 2009-08-16 08:58:22 7
  • Compute running average for a column of numbers

    This is an on-line algorithm for calculating the mean value for numbers in a column. Also known as "running average" or "moving average".


    6
    awk '{avg += ($1 - avg) / NR;} END { print avg; }'
    ashawley · 2009-09-10 17:06:03 7
  • Visualizing system performance data


    6
    (echo "set terminal png;plot '-' u 1:2 t 'cpu' w linespoints;"; sudo vmstat 2 10 | awk 'NR > 2 {print NR, $13}') | gnuplot > plot.png
    grokskookum · 2009-09-23 16:40:13 12
  • sort lines by length


    6
    awk '{print length, $0;}' | sort -nr
    ashawley · 2009-10-07 16:32:27 4
  • Print Memory Utilization Percentage For a specific process and it's children

    Change the name of the process and what is echoed to suit your needs. The brackets around the h in the grep statement cause grep to skip over "grep httpd", it is the equivalent of grep -v grep although more elegant. Show Sample Output


    6
    TOTAL_RAM=`free | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $2 }'`; PROC_RSS=`ps axo rss,comm | grep [h]ttpd | awk '{ TOTAL += $1 } END { print TOTAL }'`; PROC_PCT=`echo "scale=4; ( $PROC_RSS/$TOTAL_RAM ) * 100" | bc`; echo "RAM Used by HTTP: $PROC_PCT%"
    d34dh0r53 · 2010-02-26 20:29:45 8
  • List .log files open by a pid

    Uses lsof to display the full path of ".log" files opened by a specified PID.


    6
    lsof -p 1234 | grep -E "\.log$" | awk '{print $NF}'
    zlemini · 2010-03-05 11:41:28 5
  • Capture video of a linux desktop


    6
    ffmpeg -f x11grab -s `xdpyinfo | grep 'dimensions:'|awk '{print $2}'` -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq /tmp/out.mpg > /root/howto/capture_screen_video_ffmpeg
    brubaker · 2010-03-27 21:31:34 5
  • processes per user counter

    enumerates the number of processes for each user. ps BSD format is used here , for standard Unix format use : ps -eLf |awk '{$1} {++P[$1]} END {for(a in P) if (a !="UID") print a,P[a]}' Show Sample Output


    6
    ps aux |awk '{$1} {++P[$1]} END {for(a in P) if (a !="USER") print a,P[a]}'
    benyounes · 2010-04-28 15:25:18 3
  • Determine if photos have been rotated to portrait orientation instead of normal landscape orientation

    Most people take photos in landscape orientation (wider than it is tall). Sometimes though you turn the camera sideways to capture a narrow/tall subject. Assuming you then manually rotate those picture files 90 degrees for proper viewing on screen or photo frame, you now have a mix of orientations in your photos directory. This command will print out the names of all the photos in the current directory whose vertical resolution is larger than its horizontal resolution (i.e. portrait orientation). You can then take that list of files and deal with them however you need to, like re-rotating back to landscape for consistent printing with all the others. This command requires the "identify" command from the ImageMagick command-line image manipulation suite. Sample output from identify: identify PICT2821.JPG PICT2821.JPG JPEG 1536x2048 1536x2048+0+0 8-bit DirectClass 688KB 0.016u 0:00.006 Show Sample Output


    6
    for i in *; do identify $i | awk '{split($3,a,"x"); if (a[2]>a[1]) print $1;}'; done
    dmmst19 · 2014-05-27 23:41:24 10
  • Find dupe files by checking md5sum


    6
    find /glftpd/site/archive -type f|grep '([0-9]\{1,9\})\.[^.]\+$'|parallel -n1 -j200% md5sum ::: |awk 'x[$1]++ { print $2 " :::"}'|sed 's/^/Dupe: /g'|sed 's,Dupe,\x1B[31m&\x1B[0m,'
    wuseman1 · 2019-10-22 16:02:15 151
  • Save a copy of all debian packages in the form in which they are installed and configured on your system

    A copy of all installed debian packages on your system will be put back together, with all changes in configuration files you made and placed in the current directory. Make sure you have enough disk space (say 2-3 GB). Break any time with Ctrl+C. Show Sample Output


    6
    for a in $(sudo dpkg --get-selections|cut -f1); do dpkg-repack $a|awk '{if (system("sleep .5 && exit 2") != 2) exit; print}';done
    knoppix5 · 2021-01-17 17:07:02 336
  • Count the number of characters in each line


    5
    awk '{count[length]++}END{for(i in count){printf("%d: %d\n", count[i], i)}}'
    bpfx · 2009-02-05 14:20:39 26
  • Find all the files more than 10MB, sort in descending order of size and record the output of filenames and size in a text file.

    This command specifies the size in Kilobytes using 'k' in the -size +(N)k option. The plus sign says greater than. -exec [cmd] {} \; invokes ls -l command on each file and awk strips off the values of the 5th (size) and the 9th (filename) column from the ls -l output to display. Sort is done in reversed order (descending) numerically using sort -rn options. A cron job could be run to execute a script like this and alert the users if a dir has files exceeding certain size, and provide file details as well. Show Sample Output


    5
    find . -size +10240k -exec ls -l {} \; | awk '{ print $5,"",$9 }'|sort -rn > message.out
    rommelsharma · 2009-02-17 19:39:56 10
  • restore the contents of a deleted file for which a descriptor is still available

    Note that the file at the given path will have the contents of the (still) deleted file, but it is a new file with a new node number; in other words, this restores the data, but it does not actually "undelete" the old file. I posted a function declaration encapsulating this functionality to http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7yx6f/how_to_undelete_any_open_deleted_file_in_linux/c07sqwe (please excuse the crap formatting).


    5
    N="filepath" ; P=/proc/$(lsof +L1 | grep "$N" | awk '{print $2}')/fd ; ls -l $P | sed -rn "/$N/s/.*([0-9]+) ->.*/\1/p" | xargs -I_ cat $P/_ > "$N"
    laburu · 2009-02-21 02:31:24 28
  • ‹ First  < 3 4 5 6 7 >  Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Check These Out

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" }

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: