Commands using head sorted by votes

Commands using head (314)

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print the first line of every file which is newer than a certain date and in the current directory

create the "newer than" file by: touch -t 201011151300 ./201011151300.txt the format for the time is [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS] Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
hello this is file one line 1
hello this is file two line 1
```
0

find . -type f -newer 201011151300.txt -exec head -1 {} \;

abm2009 · 2010-11-15 22:51:13 5
create random string from /dev/urandom (or another length)

The same command, but with a base64 filter, more forgiving for special characters than tr. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
lMlZ1ivrDed9y45IGwMbAL2HIAMcd7xqfcd1kjNvThSnn8ZCeQOZAqHc2RilUN2f
```
0

echo `cat /dev/urandom | base64 | tr -dc "[:alnum:]" | head -c64`

Dereckson · 2010-12-06 21:04:57 3
telling you from where your commit come from

usage: where COMMIT for instance: where 1178c5950d321a8c5cd8294cd67535157e296554 where HEAD~5 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1178c5950d321a8c5cd8294cd67535157e296554 is ahead of 
(project16/taskbranch-514)
by 3 commits
   
```
0

function where(){ COUNT=0; while [ `where_arg $1~$COUNT | wc -w` == 0 ]; do let COUNT=COUNT+1; done; echo "$1 is ahead of "; where_arg $1~$COUNT; echo "by $COUNT commits";};function where_arg(){ git log $@ --decorate -1 | head -n1 | cut -d ' ' -f3- ;}

noisy · 2010-12-08 15:41:39 3
Prints out, what the users name, notifyed in the gecos field, is

finger - gets logged in users grep $(whoami) - greps only the current user (if there are more logged in) head -n1 - just one line awk '{print $2 " " $3}' - second and third word, seperated with a space (the users name) OT: My first commandlinefu-command :) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
John Doe
```
0

finger | grep $(whoami) | head -n1 | awk '{print $2 " " $3}'

mogoh · 2011-01-07 16:54:11 6
Find artist and title of a music cd, UPC code given (first result only)

Changed wget to curl and it doesn't create a file anymore. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Iron Maiden - Killers
```
0

curl http://www.discogs.com/search?q=724349691704 2> /dev/null | grep \/release\/ | head -2 | tail -1 | sed -e 's/^<div>.*>$.*$<\/a><\/div>/\1/'

mrman · 2011-01-30 23:45:50 3
List 50 largest source files in a project

Will work with filenames with spaces inside. Will not break in case of someone making directory that matches *.pm. And sorts from largest. Where largest is file size, not line count.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type f -name '*.pm' -printf '%6s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -n 50

depesz · 2011-02-09 16:19:11 17
Animated Desktop: electricsheep

This is a simple command which makes electricsheep render directly to your background
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

nice -n 5 electricsheep -window-id `xwininfo -root|head -n 2|grep xwininfo|cut -c 22-26`

kbaegis · 2011-02-14 03:58:58 4
show top 10 most memory hungry process with a simple format of (%mem, pid, short command)

Pros: the format is very simple, there is no need to show every columns, and full command with args the first column is memory consumption % the second column is pid the third is just the command (without full arguments, most application's arguments are too long) You can decide which application to kill then. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
8.2 14730 MATLAB
 5.6  2236 nautilus
 3.1     1 chromium-browse
 2.7  2555 chromium-browse
24.7     1 dropbox
 1.8  2555 chromium-browse
 1.4  2550 chromium-browse
 1.2  2555 chromium-browse
 1.2  2555 chromium-browse
 1.2  2555 chromium-browse
```
0

ps -eo pmem,pid,comm --no-headers | sort -k1 -rn | head -10

dexterhu · 2011-03-11 04:51:35 5
Show the most commonly used commands from .bash_history
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cut -f1 -d" " ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 30

AncientPC · 2011-04-25 04:40:33 3
Quick enter into a single screen session
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

alias screenr='screen -r $(screen -ls | egrep -o -e '[0-9]+' | head -n 1)'

yababay · 2011-05-12 05:44:39 5
get newest file in current directory

Uses UNIX time for sorting.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -maxdepth 1 -printf '%A@\t%p\n' | sort -r | cut -f 2,2 | head -1

dullgiulio · 2011-05-27 11:22:47 6
Extract specific lines from a text file using Stream Editor (sed)

You can actually do the same thing with a combination of head and tail. For example, in a file of four lines, if you just want the middle two lines: head -n3 sample.txt | tail -n2 Line 1 --\ Line 2 } These three lines are selected by head -n3, Line 3 --/ this feeds the following filtered list to tail: Line 4 Line 1 Line 2 \___ These two lines are filtered by tail -n2, Line 3 / This results in: Line 2 Line 3 being printed to screen (or wherever you redirect it).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

head -n1 sample.txt | tail -n1

gtcom · 2011-06-14 17:45:04 6
cd into the latest directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

alias cd1='cd $( ls -1t | grep ^d | head -1)'

frOOgz · 2011-07-22 18:56:37 5
Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

This does the same thing that the command 'j_melis' submitted, but does it a lot quicker. That command takes 43 seconds to complete on my system, while the command I submitted takes 6 seconds. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
nukes
waken
Liszt
vain
```
0

shuf /usr/share/dict/words |grep "^[^']\{3,5\}$" |head -n4

menachem · 2011-08-24 03:43:55 3
Displays All TCP and UDP Connections
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

sudo netstat|head -n2|tail -n1 && sudo netstat -a|grep udp && echo && sudo netstat|head -n2|tail -n1 && sudo netstat -a|grep tcp

brando56894 · 2011-09-08 18:54:36 3
Makes you look busy

Enhancement for the 'busy' command originally posted by busybee : less chars, no escape issue, and most important it exclude small files ( opening a 5 lines file isn't that persuasive I think ;) ) This makes an alias for a command named 'busy'. The 'busy' command opens a random file in /usr/include to a random line with vim.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

alias busy='rnd_file=$(find /usr/include -type f -size +5k | sort -R | head -n 1) && vim +$((RANDOM%$(wc -l $rnd_file | cut -f1 -d" "))) $rnd_file'

frntn · 2011-10-16 00:05:59 3
Generate Random Text based on Length

Using urandom to get random data, deleting non-letters with tr and print the first $1 bytes.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

genRandomText() { cat /dev/urandom|tr -dc 'a-zA-Z'|head -c $1 }

thomasba · 2012-01-21 00:51:34 3
Get the first non-empty line in a text file

Use this command if your file may contain empty lines and you need to optain the first non-empty line.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

grep . "$f" | head -n1

captaincomic · 2012-01-27 02:58:07 6
Print heap addresses and size

Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
00014000-00174000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0    [heap]
Size:    1408 kB
Rss:     1292 kB
```
0

PID=`ps | grep process_name | grep -v grep | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1}'`; cat /proc/$PID/smaps | grep heap -A 2

yohananov · 2012-01-30 13:31:40 3
Generate random sensible passwords, and copy them to the clipboard

Use the excellent sensiblepasswords.com to a generate random (yet easy-to-remember) password every second, and copy it to the clipboard. Useful for generating a list of passwords and pasting them into a spreadsheet. This script uses "madebynathan"'s "cb" function (http://madebynathan.com/2011/10/04/a-nicer-way-to-use-xclip/); you could also replace "cb" with xclip -selection c Remove "while true; do" and "; done" to generate and copy only 1 password. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Copied to clipboard: speedily702nixed
Copied to clipboard: rarities648toasting
Copied to clipboard: flunkies754inflect
Copied to clipboard: bogey202calves
^C
```
0

while true; do curl -s http://sensiblepassword.com/?harder=1 | tail -n 15 | head -n 1 | sed 's;<br/>;;' | cut -c 5- | cb; sleep 1; done

supervacuo · 2012-01-30 20:52:14 44
display memory usage of a process

page where I got inspiration: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/5473/get-acurate-memory-usage-of-a-process-in-megabytes and http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/10022/display-the-top-10-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

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%"

0disse0 · 2012-02-03 16:10:36 12
A bash function to show the files most recently modified in the named (or current) directory

Returns the most recently modified file in the current (or specified) directory. You can also get the oldest file, via: ls -t1 $* | tail-1 ;
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ls -t1 $* | head -1 ;

darkhorse9933 · 2012-02-10 22:13:24 6
Count Number of Columns in TPC-H table-file (or any pipe seperated file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

head -n1 nation.tbl | sed 's/$.$/\1\n/g' | sort | uniq -c | grep \| | awk '{ print $1 }'

maarten · 2012-03-03 12:35:58 3
Matrix Style

A tweak using Patola's code as a base, this full-width green matrix display has all the frills (and all the printable characters). You don't need the surrounding parens if you don't care about losing globbing capabilities. Z-shell (/bin/zsh) needs neither the parens nor the `set -o noglob` Screen shot (animated): http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg32/scaled.php?server=32&filename=matrixh.gif&res=landing If it's too slow, try lowering the `sleep 0.05` or even replacing it with `true` (which is faster than `sleep 0`). I squashed it as narrow as I could to conserve space, though somebody could probably squeeze a char or two out. Enjoy!
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

(set -o noglob;while sleep 0.05;do for r in `grep -ao '[[:print:]]' /dev/urandom|head -$((COLUMNS/3))`;do [ $((RANDOM%6)) -le 1 ] && r=\ ;echo -ne "\e[$((RANDOM%7/-6+2));32m $r ";done;echo;done)

adamhotep · 2012-04-13 02:09:10 3
set desktop background to highest-rated image from Reddit /r/wallpapers

Doesn't depend on curl and doesn't use thumbnails as wallpaper (which has the unfortunate effect of only allowing imgur links)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

wget -O - http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers.rss | grep -Eo 'http://i.imgur.com[^&]+jpg' | head -1 | xargs wget -O background.jpg

untitaker · 2012-04-25 11:15:26 4
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Takes all file except file between !()

Go to tmp : cd /tmp; mkdir retmp; cd retmp Create 10 files : for i in {1..10}; do touch test$i; done Remove all files except test10 : rm !(test10)

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Makes you look busy

This makes an alias for a command named 'busy'. The 'busy' command opens a random file in /usr/include to a random line with vim. Drop this in your .bash_aliases and make sure that file is initialized in your .bashrc.

Reduce PDF size

Get file access control list

Kill a process by its partial name

pkill is a standard command and kills processes Byte part of their name.

Switch to the previous branch used in git(1)

Very useful if you keep switching between the same two branches all the time.

Restrict the use of dmesg for current user/session

Linux offers an interesting option to restrict the use of dmesg. It is available via /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict. You can check the status with: $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict Alternatively you can use sysctl: $ sudo sysctl -w kernel.dmesg_restrict=1 To make your change persistent across reboot, edit a fille in /etc/sysctl.d/.

Find out how old a web page is

I used to use the Firefox "View page info" feature a lot to determine how stale the web page I was looking at was. Now that I use mostly Chrome I miss that feature, so here is a command line alternative using wget. The -S says to display the server response, the --spider says to not download any files/pages, just fetch the header. The output goes to stderr, so to grep it you use 2>&1 to combine the stderr stream with stdout, the pipe that to grep for Last-Modified. You can use curl instead if you have it installed, like this: $ curl --head -s http://osswin.sourceforge.net | grep Mod

Tar - Compress by excluding folders

If you give tar a list of filenames, it will not add the directories, so if you don't care about directory ownership or permissions, you can save some space. Tar will create directories as necessary when extracting. This command is limited by the maximum supported size of the argument list, so if you are trying to tar up the whole OS for instance, you may just get "Argument list too long".

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Commands using head (314)

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