Commands using file sorted by votes

Commands using file (166)

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Generate Files with Random Content and Size in Bash

Create a bunch of random files with random binary content. Basically dd dumps randomly from your hard disk to files random-file*. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
random-file.5
random-file.6
random-file.7
random-file.8
random-file.9
```
0

no_of_files=10; counter=1; while [[ $counter -le $no_of_files ]]; do echo Creating file no $counter; dd bs=1024 count=$RANDOM skip=$RANDOM if=/dev/sda of=random-file.$counter; let "counter += 1"; done

rajaseelan · 2009-07-31 16:34:47 5
total text files in current dir

get files without extensions, get ASCII and utf-8 as "text/plain" Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
12
```
0

file -i * | grep 'text/plain' | wc -l

voyeg3r · 2009-08-16 21:22:46 4
Do a search-and-replace in a file after making a backup

"&&" runs sed if and only if the backup completed and /bin/cp exited cleanly. Works for multiple files; just specify multiple filenames (or glob). Use -v switch for cp to play it safe.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for file in <filename>; do cp $file{,.bak} && sed 's/old/new/g' $file.bak > $file; done

Cenobite · 2009-08-25 16:19:45 5
List all text files (exclude binary files)

List all text files in the current directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . | xargs file | grep ".*: .* text" | sed "s;$.*$: .* text.*;\1;"

matthewbauer · 2009-09-22 01:50:25 8
number the line of a file

cat -n file : number all line cat -b file : number only non empty line see man cat
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cat -n file or cat -b file

eastwind · 2009-09-24 12:18:40 4
Better "hours of video" summary for each file/dir in the current directory

I know this has been beaten to death but finding video files using mime types and printing the "hours of video" for each directory is (IMHO) easier to parse than just a single total. Output is in minutes. Among the other niceties is that it omits printing of non-video files/folders PS: Barely managed to fit it within the 255 character limit :D Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Fundamentals Of Physics - 1724.32
Google Techtalks - 258.292
Introduction to Algorithms - 1805.26
Linear Algebra - 1675.23
```
0

for item in *;do echo -n "$item - ";find "$item" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -d'\n' /usr/share/doc/mplayer/examples/midentify | grep ID_LENGTH | awk -F= '{sum+=$2} END {print(sum/60)}'; done | grep -v ' - 0$'

jnash · 2009-11-19 06:28:15 3
Count repeated lines, listing them in descending order of frequency

Finds all (not just adjacent) repeated lines in a file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
      6 G
      6 E
      6 C
      6 A
      4 F
      4 D
      4 B
      4 0.5
      4 0.1
      2 1
      2 0.9
      2 0.7
      2 0.4
      2 0.2
```
0

LC_ALL=C sort file | uniq -c | sort -n -k1 -r

drmaciver · 2010-03-23 12:09:04 3
Trim png files in a folder
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for file in `ls *.png`; do convert -trim $file $file; done

adrienhaxaire · 2010-10-21 13:20:30 6
Trim png files in a folder
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for file in *.png; do mogrify -trim "$file"; done

depesz · 2010-10-21 13:58:05 4
Using associative array to remove all files and directories under PWD except "$1", "$2", "$3",..."$n"

Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
rany:~/Desktop$ ls
f1  f2  f3  f4 
rany:~/Desktop$ rmall_but f1 f4
rany:~/Desktop$ ls
f1  f4
rany:~/Desktop$
```
0

rmall_but() { declare -A keep;for arg;do keep[${arg%/}]=1;done;for file in *;do [[ ${keep[$file]} ]] || rm -rf "$file";done; }

RanyAlbeg · 2011-02-05 14:38:54 3
Play flash videos in VLC

If you used to do `vlc /tmp/Flash*`, but no longer can't, this is for you.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find -L /proc/`ps aux | grep [f]lash | awk '{print $2}'`/fd/ | xargs file -L | grep Video | awk '{sub(/:/, ""); print $1}' | xargs vlc

tuxcanfly · 2011-07-24 17:53:46 3
Set executable permissions only to executable files

If you make a mess (like I did) and you removed all the executable permissions of a directory (or you set executable permissions to everything) this can help. It supports spaces and other special characters in the file paths, but it will work only in bash, GNU find and GNU egrep. You can complement it with these two commands: 1. add executable permission to directories: find . type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod +x 2. and remove to files: find . type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod -x Or, in the same loop: while IFS= read -r -u3 -d $'\0' file; do case $(file "$file" | cut -f 2- -d :) in :*executable*|*ELF*|*directory*) chmod +x "$file" ;; *) chmod -x "$file" ;; esac || break done 3< <(find . -print0) Ideas stolen from Greg's wiki: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

while IFS= read -r -u3 -d $'\0' file; do file "$file" | egrep -q 'executable|ELF' && chmod +x "$file"; done 3< <(find . -type f -print0)

keymon · 2011-08-18 15:37:23 13
Add crc32 checksum in the filenames of all mp4

Rename all mp4 files with crc32 information. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Video 01.mp4 -> Video 01 [A317C812].mp4
Video 02.mp4 -> Video 02 [C8E3551B].mp4
Video 03.mp4 -> Video 03 [D2F5E37A].mp4
```
0

for file in *.mp4; do mv "$file" "${file%.*} [$(cksfv -b -q "$file" | egrep -o "\b[A-F0-9]{8}\b$")].${file#*.}"; done

skapi · 2011-09-13 16:53:28 3
delete the files from the given directory except the PDF file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ls -1 $PATH*/* | xargs file | awk -F":" '!($2~/PDF document/){print $1}' |xargs rm -rf

karuppasamy · 2011-11-02 04:42:32 3
Parallel XZ with progress bar

You need: pxz for the actual work (http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/pxz/). The function could be better with better multifile and stdin/out support.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

function xzv() { THREADS=`grep processor /proc/cpuinfo | wc -l`; for file in $*; do pv -s `stat -c%s $file` < $file | pxz -q -T $THREADS > $file.xz ; done; }

oernii2 · 2011-12-14 08:22:08 5
Fast way to get the product of every number in a file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(sed 's/^/x*=/' file ; echo x) | bc

fallen3angel · 2012-01-03 13:45:25 3
List only locally modified files with CVS
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cvs -q diff --brief | grep file | cut -d/ -f3- | cut -d',' -f1

chstr · 2012-03-07 12:08:21 3
Find Files Which Should Be Executable But Are Not

Helps to fix permissions when a user clobbers them in their home directory or elsewhere. Does not rely on file extension, but uses the `file` command for context.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type f ! -perm /u+x -printf "\"%p\"\n" | xargs file | grep -i executable

aaronjcopley · 2012-03-12 17:29:36 3

Convert flac to mp3

Converts flac files to mp3 with the same file names in the same directory. Show Sample Output

for file in *.flac; do flac -cd "$file" | lame -h -b 320 - "${file%.flac}.mp3"; done

samadhi · 2012-03-23 08:05:17 4

Replaces spaces in filename with _ and converts upper to lower case

All files in the directory will be renamed replacing every space in the filename by "_" (underline) and converting upper case characters to lower case characters. e.g. Foo Bar.txt --> foo_bar.txt
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for file in * ; do mv "$file" `echo "$file" | tr ' ' '_' | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`; done

cengztr · 2012-05-06 17:54:06 3
Opens up cached flash plugin video files(linux)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

vlc $(for f in /proc/$(pgrep -f libflashplayer.so |head -n 1)/fd/*; do ;if $(file ${f} |grep -q "broken symbolic link to \`/tmp/FlashXX"); then echo ${f};fi;done)

rtaycher · 2012-08-07 08:04:56 3
Add executable bit to all shell scripts under current directory recursively.

Allows to change 'shell' compatible files execution bit even if their name is not *.sh
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type f -exec file '{}' + | grep shell | awk -F':' '{print $1}' | xargs chmod u+x

llebegue · 2012-08-09 18:53:08 3
detect partitions
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

sudo file -bs /dev/sda | sed -e 's/.*partition 1$.*$ code offset.*/partition 1\1/g' -e 's/$.$;/\1\n/g'

jlaunay · 2012-08-17 12:54:05 5
find files between specific date/times and move them to another folder

touch -t 201208211200 first ; touch -t 201208220100 last ; creates 2 files: first & last, with timestamps that the find command should look between: 201208211200 = 2012-08-21 12:00 201208220100 = 2012-08-22 01:00 then we run find command with "-newer" switch, that finds by comparing timestamp against a reference file: find /path/to/files/ -newer first ! -newer last meaning: find any files in /path/to/files that are newer than file "first" and not newer than file "last" pipe the output of this find command through xargs to a move command: | xargs -ifile mv -fv file /path/to/destination/ and finally, remove the reference files we created for this operation: rm first; rm last;
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

touch -t 201208211200 first ; touch -t 201208220100 last ; find /path/to/files/ -newer first ! -newer last | xargs -ifile mv -fv file /path/to/destination/ ; rm first; rm last;

ktopaz · 2012-08-22 09:51:40 6
Revert all modified files in an SVN repo
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for file in `svn st | awk '{print $2}'`; do svn revert $file; done

srounce · 2012-09-14 11:05:29 4
‹ First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last ›

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command! -nargs=1 Vs vs <args>

Because entering ':' requires that you press shift, sometimes common command-line / mini-buffer commands will be capitalized by accident.

Break lines after, for example 78 characters, but don't break within a word/string

Per default, linux/unix shells are configured with a width of 80 characters. If you like to edit a phrase or string on a line with more than 80 characters it might take long to go there (for example a line with 1000 characters and you like to edit the 98th word which is character 598-603). Maybe you might wish to use 78 characters, because if you forward the text via mail and the text will be quoted (2 extra characters at the beginning to the line "> "), you use 80 characters, otherwise 82, which are lame.

Number of .... indicate how far down to cd

Use dots to cd down directories instead of having to remember all of the pesky back slashes! Better yet, works on even and odd number of dots! Now, just estimate how far down you want to traverse.

connect via ssh using mac address

Instead of looking for the right ip address, just pick whatever address you like and set a static ip mapping.

Compress and store the image of a disk over the network

Create an image of "device" and send it to another machine through the network ("target" and "port" sets the ip and port the stream will be sent to), outputting a progress bar On the machine that will receive, compress and store the file, use: $nc -l -p | 7z a -si -m0=lzma2 -mx=9 -ms=on Optionally, add the -v4g switch at the end of the line in order to split the file every 4 gigabytes (or set another size: accepted suffixes are k, m and g). The file will be compressed using 7z format, lzma2 algorithm, with maximum compression level and solid file activated. The compression stage will be executed on the machine which will store the image. It was planned this way because the processor on that machine was faster, and being on a gigabit network, transfering the uncompressed image wasn't much of a problem.

Scan all open ports without any required program

Function that outputs dots every second until command completes

Very useful in shell scripts because you can run a task nicely in the background using job-control and output progress until it completes. Here's an example of how I use it in backup scripts to run gpg in the background to encrypt an archive file (which I create in this same way). $! is the process ID of the last run command, which is saved here as the variable PI, then sleeper is called with the process id of the gpg task (PI), and sleeper is also specified to output : instead of the default . every 3 seconds instead of the default 1. So a shorter version would be sleeper $!; The wait is also used here, though it may not be needed on your system. $ echo ">>> ENCRYPTING SQL BACKUP" $ gpg --output archive.tgz.asc --encrypt archive.tgz 1>/dev/null & $ PI=$!; sleeper $PI ":" 3; wait $PI && rm archive.tgz &>/dev/null Previously to get around the $! not always being available, I would instead check for the existance of the process ID by checking if the directory /proc/$PID existed, but not everyone uses proc anymore. That version is currently the one at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html but I plan on upgrading to this new version soon.

Update file with patch

diff originalfile updatedfile > my.patch

Delete all git branches except master

Delete all your branches except master (useful after archiving branches)

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"

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Commands using file (166)

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