Commands using cut (586)

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diff the same file in two directories.
This is useful when you're diffing two files of the same name in radically different directory trees. For example: Set $ path1='/some/long/convoluted/path/to/all/of/your/source/from/a/long/dead/machine' then $ path2='/local/version/of/same/file' then run the command. Much easier on the eyes when you're looking back across your command history, especially if you're doing the same diff over and over again.

List your MACs address
List all MAC addresses on a Linux box. sort -u is useful when having virtual interfaces.

Regenerate the /etc/mtab file

Find top 10 largest files in /var directory (subdirectories and hidden files included )
Same as above, but modified to show human readable output

Find an installed app

List files opened by a PID
Lis all files opened by a particular process id. "PID"

Add directory to $PATH if it's not already there
Sometimes in a script you want to make sure that a directory is in the path, and add it in if it's not already there. In this example, $dir contains the new directory you want to add to the path if it's not already present. There are multiple ways to do this, but this one is a nice clean shell-internal approach. I based it on http://stackoverflow.com/a/1397020. You can also do it using tr to separate the path into lines and grep -x to look for exact matches, like this: $ if ! $(echo "$PATH" | tr ":" "\n" | grep -qx "$dir") ; then PATH=$PATH:$dir ; fi which I got from http://stackoverflow.com/a/5048977. Or replace the "echo | tr" part with a shell parameter expansion, like $ if ! $(echo "${PATH//:/$'\n'}" | grep -qx "$dir") ; then PATH=$PATH:$dir ; fi which I got from http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3209/. There are also other more regex-y ways to do it, but I find the ones listed here easiest to follow. Note some of this is specific to the bash shell.

add all files not under version control to repository
This should handle whitespaces well and will not get confused if your filenames have "?" in them

stop windows update
Windows only: stops windows update and the nagging restart window. You need your admin password for this one.

Text message on wallpaper
Display some text on the wallpaper especially warning messages


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