Commands using cat sorted by votes

Commands using cat (514)

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Show line numbers in a text file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

cat x

umahp44 · 2011-09-15 11:53:47 3
show debian version

work on any debian based GNU/Linux distro Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
gnu@robby:~$ cat /etc/debian_version 
squeeze/sid
```
-6

cat /etc/debian_version

eastwind · 2011-12-11 11:13:16 185
Get fresh FollowBack list for Twitter

Go to "https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23TeamFollowBack&src=hash" and then copy al the text on the page. If you scroll down the page will be bigger. Then put al the text in a text file called twit.txt If you follow the user there is a high probability the users give you follow back. To follow all the users you can use an iMacros script.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

for a in $(seq 5 8); do cat twit.txt | cut -d " " -f$a | grep "^@" | sort -u; done > followlst.txt

xmuda · 2013-03-29 21:07:09 5
emptying a file

with this command you can empty file Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
cat /dev/null >err.log
```
-8

cat /dev/null >filename

vorphalax · 2009-02-13 10:50:41 22
Display which distro is installed

Found in comments section works on most Linux flavors. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
LSB Version:	core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-noarch:core-2.0-ia32:core-3.0-ia32:desktop-3.1-ia32:desktop-3.1-noarch:graphics-2.0-ia32:graphics-2.0-noarch:graphics-3.1-ia32:graphics-3.1-noarch
Distributor ID:	SUSE LINUX
Description:	SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (i586)
Release:	10
Codename:	n/a
```
-8

test `uname` = Linux && lsb_release -a || ( test `uname` = SunOS && cat /etc/release || uname -rms )

virtualshock · 2009-07-07 20:51:30 59
Creating ISO Images from Audio CD

you should umount /dev/cdrom before using this cli
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

cat /dev/scd0 > ~/audio_image.iso

eastwind · 2011-09-24 15:29:27 11
Convert JSON to YAML

Valid JSON is a subset of YAML; no transformation is necessary; however, YAML has many syntax features that are not valid JSON, so you can't do the reverse as easily.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

cat data.json >data.yml

Mozai · 2013-04-25 04:09:58 6
Easily find an old command you run

I know how hard it is to find an old command running through all the files because you couldn't remember for your life what it was. Heres the solution!! Grep the history for it. depending on how old the command you can head or tail or if you wanted to search all because you cannot think how long ago it was then miss out the middle part of the command. This is a very easy and effective way to find that command you are looking for.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

cat .bash_history | tail -100 | grep {command}

techie · 2013-04-10 10:40:52 8
Create a iso from the disk.

Generate the iso from the disk, easily. same as "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/mydisk.iso"
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-10

cat /dev/cdrom > ~/mydisk.iso

sata · 2009-03-26 05:54:41 29
gunzip all .gz file in current dir

gunzip all .gz file in current dir
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-10

ls | grep .gz >> list.txt && cat list.txt | while read x ; do gunzip -d $x ; done && rm -rf list.txt

maccu · 2010-11-17 11:06:02 14
What is the sound of your memory ?
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

sudo cat /dev/mem > /dev/dsp

eastwind · 2009-04-22 07:26:10 4
display a tab separated file as columns
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

cat <file>|column -t

bakhru · 2015-05-30 18:56:34 11
List system's users
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-12

teste.txt < cut -d : -f 1,5 /etc/passwd | tr : \\t | tr a-z A-Z | cat teste.txt

osvaldofilho · 2009-10-20 14:53:38 8
Combining text files into one file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-16

ls | grep *.txt | while read file; do cat $file >> ./output.txt; done;

octopus · 2010-04-16 13:19:38 6
‹ First < 19 20 21

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Colorized grep in less

Get your colorized grep output in less(1). This involves two things: forcing grep to output colors even though it's not going to a terminal and telling less to handle those properly.

Pipe a textfile to vim and move the cursor to a certain line

This command is more for demonstrating piping to vim and jumping to a specific line than anything else. Exit vim with :q! +23 jumps to line 23 - make vim receive the data from the pipe

Get last sleep time on a Mac

Similarly for last wake time: $ sysctl -a | grep waketime

Print a list of all hardlinks in the working directory, recursively

libpurple likes to hardlink files repeatedly. To ignore libpurple, use sed: | sed '/\.\/\.purple/d'

list files recursively by size

Display a block of text with AWK

I find this terribly useful for grepping through a file, looking for just a block of text. There's "grep -A # pattern file.txt" to see a specific number of lines following your pattern, but what if you want to see the whole block? Say, the output of "dmidecode" (as root): $ dmidecode | awk '/Battery/,/^$/' Will show me everything following the battery block up to the next block of text. Again, I find this extremely useful when I want to see whole blocks of text based on a pattern, and I don't care to see the rest of the data in output. This could be used against the '/etc/securetty/user' file on Unix to find the block of a specific user. It could be used against VirtualHosts or Directories on Apache to find specific definitions. The scenarios go on for any text formatted in a block fashion. Very handy.

Move all files between to date

In a folder with many files and folders, you want to move all files where the date is >= the file olderFilesNameToMove and

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" }

This is N5 sorta like rot13 but with numbers only

This is N5 sorta like rot13 but with numbers only. Encrypt echo "$1" | xxd -p | tr '0-9' '5-90-6' Decrypt echo "$1" | tr '0-9' '5-90-6' | xxd -r -p

Replaces a color in a PDF document, useful for removing a dark background before printing.

The pdf is first converted to a bitmap, so change "-density" to match your printer resolution. Also be careful about the RAM required. In this example rgb(0,0,0) is replaced by rgb(255,255,255), change to suit your needs.

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Commands using cat (514)

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