Commands using file sorted by votes

Commands using file (166)

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Cat files in a directory; for loop command

Original submitted version would break if any filenames had whitespaces in them. The command is a Bad Idea anyhow, because you will end up `cat`ing a binary or something else specacularly bad.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in ./*; do cat "$file"; sleep 0.3

DopeGhoti · 2011-11-28 20:10:57 3
Write in a text file the contents of all the zip files in a directory.

It can be used to create an index of a backup directory or to find some file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in *.zip; do unzip -l "$file" >> archiveindex.txt ; done;

chon8a · 2013-05-02 01:43:26 7
Reset the last modified time for each file in a git repo to its last commit time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for file in $( git ls-files ); do echo $file; touch -t $(git --no-pager log --date=local -1 --format="%ct" $file | php -r 'echo @date( "YmdHi.s", trim( file_get_contents( "php://stdin" ) ) );') $file; done

westonruter · 2015-07-01 00:28:06 13
stores the number of lines of "file" in a variable to use in a loop
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

count=`wc -l file | cut -d ' ' -f1`

vmplacco · 2009-02-25 21:21:47 5
convert all WAVs from any format (MS ADPCM) to PCM

I needed this for wine.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

for file in $(find -type f -iname "*wav"); do mv $file "$file"_orig.WAV; mplayer -ao pcm "$file"_orig.WAV -ao pcm:file=$file; done

oernii · 2009-04-06 21:36:04 6
determine if a shared library is compiled as 32bit or 64bit

file displays a files type the -L flag means follow sym-links (as libraries are often sym-linked to another this behavior is likely preferred) more complex behavior (*two* grep commands!) could be used to determine if the file is or is not a shared library.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

file -L <library> | grep -q '64-bit' && echo 'library is 64 bit' || echo 'library is 32 bit'

infinull · 2010-03-07 06:31:35 3
Recursive and alphabetical orderly cp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

for file in `find *| sort -n | sed 's% %?%g'`; do echo "${file//?/ }"; cp --parents "${file//?/ }" /destinity_folder/ ;done

juanmi · 2011-05-23 16:34:08 7
Remove blank lines from a file and save output to new file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

sed '/^$/d' file >newfile

haplo · 2009-09-24 19:22:49 5
download file1 file2 file3 file4 .... file 100

With counter format [001, 002, ..., 999] , nice with pictures or wallpapers collections.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

for file in $(seq -f '%03.f' 1 $TOTAL ); do echo "($file/$TOTAL)"; curl -f -O http://domain.com/Name_$file.ext; done

nordri · 2010-01-12 15:23:44 6
a find and replace within text-based files, for batch text replacement, not using perl
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

for file in `find . -iname "FILENAME"`; do cat $file | sed "s/SEARCH_STRING/REPLACE_STRING/" > $file.tmp; mv $file.tmp $file; done

unixmonkey6754 · 2010-02-24 13:46:29 3
Numerate files, rename files in a directory by incremental number

Renames files in a directory to incremental numbers, following alphabetic order. The command does not maintain extensions.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

declare -i i; i=0; for file in *; do i=`expr $i+1`; mv "$file" $i; done;

themiurgo · 2010-08-26 12:24:38 5
Numerate files, rename files in a directory by incremental number
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

declare -i i=0 ; for file in * ; do i=$[$i+1] ; mv "$file" $i; done

pepin · 2010-08-26 12:40:58 3
list with full path
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

for file in *; do echo $PWD/$file; done

Velenux · 2011-12-16 13:12:00 4
remove all dead symbolic links in a directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

for i in $(file * | grep broken | cut -d : -f 1); do rm $i; done

Znuff · 2010-11-02 16:10:42 10
list with full path

Also lists hidden files, current dir and topdir.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

for file in * .*; do echo $PWD/$file; done

marek158 · 2011-12-16 13:42:07 3
Find broken symlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

find . -type l | xargs file | grep broken

kineticrick · 2011-04-07 22:58:02 4
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Rename files in batch

Listing today’s files only

a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

The function 'box' takes either one or two arguments. The first argument is a line of text to be boxed, the second argument (optional) is a character to use to draw the box. By default, the drawing character will be '='. The function 'n()' is a helper function used to draw the upper and lower lines of the box, its arguments are a length, and an character to print. (I used 'n' because 'line', 'ln' and 'l' are all commonly used)

FLV to AVI with subtitles and forcing audio sync using mencoder

Gives MPEG-4/DivX output video file ready for uploading to YouTube from FLV file downloaded from the site and your own subtitle file UTF-8 encoded. No resizing needed. (?)

Play all files in the directory using MPlayer

Skip forward and back using the < and > keys. Display the file title with I.

Lookup hostname for IP address

Advanced python tracing

Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Kill a broken ssh connection

This is useful for example if you are on ssh in a server and the server goes down without letting you out. This is part of a larget sets of escape sequences provided by ssh. You can find them with ~? Here's the list: ~. - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions) ~B - send a BREAK to the remote system ~C - open a command line ~R - request rekey ~V/v - decrease/increase verbosity (LogLevel) ~^Z - suspend ssh ~# - list forwarded connections ~& - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate) ~? - this message ~~ - send the escape character by typing it twice (Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

Renaming a file without overwiting an existing file name

Sometimes in a hurry you may move or copy a file using an already existent file name. If you aliased the cp and mv command with the -i option you are prompted for a confirmation before overwriting but if your aliases aren't there you will loose the target file! The -b option will force the mv command to check if the destination file already exists and if it is already there a backup copy with an ending ~ is created.

Postpone a command [zsh]

When writing on the command line of zsh, by pressing Alt+q the command will be cleaned, and you can insert another one. The command you were writing will be recorder, and pasted on the prompt immediately after the "interrupting" command is inserted.

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Commands using file (166)

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