Commands using head (314)

  • Get an approximation of who the workstation is assigned to. You can wrap it in su - "$()" if you want to log into a shell as that user. Show Sample Output


    0
    last | grep -i console | grep -iv 'root' | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '{print $2}' | head -1
    phyxia · 2015-07-20 18:07:40 10
  • Useful when you need to generate password or random hash string. If you need longer string adjust parameter for "head -c 20" Show Sample Output


    0
    dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1k count=1 2>/dev/null|LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#%^&*(-_=+)'|head -c 20
    nitrogear · 2015-07-25 21:24:28 9

  • 0
    ls -1 /proc/$(ps ax | grep <Process Name> | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1;}')/task | tail -n +2
    happymarmoset · 2015-10-06 07:44:48 10

  • 0
    cut -f1 -d" " ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 30
    kenorb · 2015-10-09 16:11:37 10
  • Quick way to get the URL of the most recent audio file out of a podcast xml feed without any fancy xml parsing tools. Just curl, grep and head


    0
    mpc add `curl -s http://link.to/podcast/feed.xml | grep -o 'https*://[^"]*mp3' | head -1`
    tbon3r · 2015-10-11 09:17:35 9
  • this one includes special characters. note some some chars may be disallowed on windows systems. *nix will allow pretty much any character in a password except a carriage return. you do not want non printing characters in your password, so this is limited to the printable chars displayed on a keyboard , less space and return. edited to fix minor typo Show Sample Output


    0
    tr -dc '[:print:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w10 |head -n1 |sed 's/ //g'
    wr250 · 2016-01-09 13:43:16 12
  • Returns a list, with attributes (think `ls -l`), in reverse chronological order. N is a single numeric parameter. Robust against unfriendly filenames and directory structures. Show Sample Output


    0
    nmf() { find . -type f -printf '%T@ ' -print0 -printf '\n' | sort -rn | head -"$1" | cut -f2- -d" " | tr -d "\0" | tr "\n" "\0" | xargs -0 ls -Ulh; }
    incidentnormal · 2016-03-04 14:53:14 12
  • Display the top processes sorted by memory usage. This is mostly useful because it's easy to remember and can give me a quick 'top' view of a group of servers when used over pssh. (Though I'd recommend |head -10 to minimize the output). Show Sample Output


    0
    top -b -o +%MEM |head -17
    dak1n1 · 2016-03-16 22:14:34 12
  • Grabs the first JSON file in the directory, reads its keys, prints TSV, then prints all the json files' values as TSV. Nested objects appear as json. Unhappy times if your json has literal tabs in it. Show Sample Output


    0
    jq -r 'keys | join("\t")' $(ls -f *.json | head -1) && jq -Sr 'to_entries | [ .[] | .value | tostring ] | join("\t")' *.json
    drjeats · 2016-04-08 23:30:30 12
  • This command will find any named file types in / between two dates then will list all the metadata of those files in long format and human readable form. Adding a 't' flag to the ls command sorts the files by modified time. After all that the head -5 lists the first 5 which can be changed.


    0
    ls -laht `find / -name "*.*" -type f -newermt "2016-04-05" ! -newermt "2016-04-10"`|head -5
    ubercoo · 2016-04-19 14:26:23 10
  • by determining most popular use in history using percentage . Show Sample Output


    0
    history | awk '{CMD[$2]++;count++;}END { for (a in CMD)print CMD[a] " " CMD[a]/count*100 "% " a;}' | grep -v "./" | column -c3 -s " " -t | sort -nr | nl | head -n10
    turrtle13 · 2016-04-24 17:21:35 9
  • This server can be access by a browser or other remote terminal with ncat. I have to use de test && break to allow ctrl-c to close. Show Sample Output


    0
    while [ 1 ]; do cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc ' -~' | head -c 10 | ncat -l 8080 &> /dev/null; test $? -gt 128 && break; done
    xxjcaxx · 2016-05-04 14:36:47 10

  • 0
    cat access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
    prees · 2016-05-05 20:52:03 13
  • This is a alternate command I like to use instead of TOP or HTOP to see what are the processes which are taking up the most memory on a system. It shows the username, process ID, CPU usage, Memory usage, thread ID, Number of threads associated with parent process, Resident Set Size, Virtual Memory Size, start time of the process, and command arguments. Then it's sorted by memory and showing the top 10 with head. This of course can be changed to suit you needs. I have a small system which is why Firefox is taking so much resources. Show Sample Output


    0
    watch -n .8 'ps -eaLo uname,pid,pcpu,pmem,lwp,nlwp,rss,vsz,start_time,args --sort -pmem| head -10'
    ubercoo · 2016-05-11 01:05:53 11

  • 0
    find /var -type f -exec du -h {} \; | sort -rh | head -10
    jiananmail · 2016-05-31 00:21:32 10
  • Finds the login id of the user that owns the console. I use it to reset my touchpad after resume from suspend in /etc/pm/sleep.d/s99local


    0
    who | grep :0 | head -1 | cut -d " " -f 1
    mikef5410 · 2016-06-22 17:33:38 12

  • 0
    tr "\|\;" "\n" < ~/.bash_history | sed -e "s/^ //g" | cut -d " " -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
    turrtle13 · 2016-07-01 19:27:12 10

  • 0
    ps aux | awk '{if ($5 != 0 ) print $2,$5,$6,$11}' | sort -k2rn | head -10 | column -t
    turrtle13 · 2016-07-01 19:40:56 12
  • When bundle install sucks ...This runs isuckat_ruby.rb and when stderror matches find gem ' it will gem install what ever is missing ... Show Sample Output


    0
    gem install `ruby ./isuckat_ruby.rb 2>&1 | sed -e 's/.*find gem .//g' -e 's/ .*//g' | head -n 1`
    operat0r · 2016-08-03 19:41:27 13

  • 0
    last -x | grep shutdown | head -1
    creepyjones · 2016-08-10 21:51:48 12
  • to simulating connections Simultaneous to specific server adress to test penetrations Show Sample Output


    0
    for i in {0..60}; do (curl -Is http://46.101.214.181:10101 | head -n1 &) 2>/dev/null; sleep 1; done;
    aysadk · 2017-01-15 14:32:02 16

  • 0
    for i in {0..60}; do (curl -Is http://<domain/ip> | head -n1 &) 2>/dev/null; sleep 1; done;
    aysadk · 2017-01-24 02:47:13 13
  • To allow recursivity : find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c1-7,41- Display only filenames : find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c43- Show Sample Output


    0
    find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c1-7,41-
    MaDCOw · 2017-02-09 11:36:31 18

  • 0
    head filename.txt | column -t -s $'\t'
    NLKNguyen · 2017-02-10 23:26:10 20
  • alex@alex-box:~$ sl The program 'sl' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install sl alex@alex-box:~$ dolast Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: sl 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.


    0
    alias dolast='$( $(history 2| head -n 1| sed "s/.* //") 2>&1 | tail -n 1)'
    aheinous · 2017-02-25 01:26:49 19
  • ‹ First  < 8 9 10 11 12 >  Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Generate trigonometric/log data easily

list files recursively by size

Show used disk space:

Change the ownership of all files owned by one user.
Finds all files in /home owned by UID 1056 and changes to 2056.

strip non-constant number of directories from tar archive while decompressing
If you want to decompress the files from an archive to current directory by stripping all directory paths, use --transform option to strip path information. Unfortunately, --strip-components option is good if the target files have same and constant depth of folders. The idea was taken from http://www.unix.com/solaris/145941-how-extract-files-tar-file-without-creating-directories.html

Create a large test file (taking no space).

Play online music videos in terminal
pvl 'link1' 'link2' 'link3' Play Youtube, Vimeo, etc links without visual elements. Great for music videos when you just want the audio. You can control mplayer with this! Hit Ctrl-C twice to exit (if you're playing multiple files)

Remove duplicate entries in a file without sorting.
Using awk, find duplicates in a file without sorting, which reorders the contents. awk will not reorder them, and still find and remove duplicates which you can then redirect into another file.

Get just the IP for a hostname
has the benefit of being a bit more cross-platform.

ssh X tunneling over multiple ssh hosts (through ssh proxy)
Simply makes it possible to launch any X application residing on sshhost through sshproxy and display it on your screen where ever you are.


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: