Commands using head (314)

  • In OSX you would have to make sure that you "sudo -s" your way to happiness since it will give a few "Permission denied" errors before finally spitting out the results. In OSX the directory structure has to start with the "Users" Directory then it will recursively perform the operation. Your Lord and master, Mematron Show Sample Output


    1
    sudo -s du -sm /Users/* | sort -nr | head -n 10
    mematron · 2012-09-13 10:15:23 4

  • 1
    echo $(</dev/urandom tr -dc 1-6 | head -c1)
    unixmonkey40000 · 2012-09-21 08:38:51 7
  • Generate a 18 character password from character set a-zA-Z0-9 from /dev/urandom, pipe the output to Python which prints the password on standard out and in crypt sha512 form. Show Sample Output


    1
    cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 18 | head -1 | python -c "import sys,crypt; stdin=sys.stdin.readline().rstrip('\n'); print stdin;print crypt.crypt(stdin)"
    cnyg · 2012-11-09 00:40:22 4
  • Replaces hexdump with the more succint xxd, and the sed was unnecessarily complex.


    1
    xxd -p /dev/urandom |fold -60|head -30|sed 's/\(..\)/\1 /g'
    psifertex · 2013-02-19 22:18:52 4

  • 1
    tr -dc 'A-Za-z0-9!@#$%^&*' < /dev/urandom | fold -w 12 | head -n 1
    opexxx · 2013-03-15 13:20:32 81
  • Interesting to see which packages are larger than the kernel package. Useful to understand which RPMs might be candidates to remove if drive space is restricted. Show Sample Output


    1
    rpm -qa --queryformat '%{size} %{name}-%{version}-%{release}\n' | sort -k 1,1 -rn | nl | head -16
    mpb · 2013-03-19 21:10:54 6

  • 1
    awk '{print $1}' ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -n 10
    nesses · 2013-05-03 16:24:30 6
  • I'm not sure how reliable this command is, but it works for my needs. Here's also a variant using grep. nslookup www.example.com | grep "^Address: " | awk '{print $2}' Show Sample Output


    1
    nslookup www.example.com | tail -2 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'
    wsams · 2013-09-05 20:26:45 11
  • Sorts by latest modified files by looking to current directory and all subdirectories Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -name '*pdf*' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lt | head -20
    fuats · 2013-10-03 21:58:51 9

  • 1
    for i in `seq 1 4096`; do tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c8192 > dummy$i.rnd; done
    BoxingOctopus · 2013-11-11 21:27:15 8
  • Using the 'time' command, running this with 'tr' took 28 seconds (and change) each time but using base64 only took 8 seconds (and change). If the file doesn't have to be viewable, pulling straight from urandom with head only took 6 seconds (and change)


    1
    for i in {1..4096}; do base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 8192 > dummy$i.rnd ; done
    pdxdoughnut · 2013-11-12 00:36:10 9
  • Download latest NVIDIA Geforce x64 Windows7-8 driver from Nvidia's website. Pulls the latest download version (which includes beta). This is the "English" version. The following command includes a 'sed' line to replace "english" with "international" if needed. You can also replace the starting subdomain with "eu." "uk." and others. Enjoy this one liner! 1 character under the max :) wget "us.download.nvidia.com$(wget -qO- "$(wget -qO- "nvidia.com/Download/processFind.aspx?psid=95&pfid=695&osid=19&lid=1&lang=en-us" | awk '/driverResults.aspx/ {print $4}' | cut -d "'" -f2 | head -n 1)" | awk '/url=/ {print $2}' | sed -e "s/english/international/" | cut -d '=' -f3 | cut -d '&' -f1)" Show Sample Output


    1
    wget "us.download.nvidia.com$(wget -qO- "$(wget -qO- "nvidia.com/Download/processFind.aspx?psid=95&pfid=695&osid=19&lid=1&lang=en-us"|awk '/driverResults.aspx/ {print $4}'|cut -d "'" -f2|head -n 1)"|awk '/url=/ {print $2}'|cut -d '=' -f3|cut -d '&' -f1)"
    lowjax · 2013-11-21 03:04:59 11
  • Specific to OSX. Show Sample Output


    1
    sysctl -a | grep boottime | head -n 1
    lgarron · 2014-01-24 13:03:48 7

  • 1
    git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/pack-*.idx | grep blob | sort -k3nr | head | while read s x b x; do git rev-list --all --objects | grep $s | awk '{print "'"$b"'",$0;}'; done
    qdrizh · 2014-06-25 07:37:24 6
  • Print the IP address and the Mac address in the same line Show Sample Output


    1
    ifconfig | head -n 2 | tr -d '\n' | sed -n 's/.*\(00:[^ ]*\).*\(adr:[^ ]*\).*/mac:\1 - \2/p'
    Koobiac · 2014-09-03 14:35:27 18
  • Top 30 History Command line with histogram display Show Sample Output


    1
    history|awk '{print $2}'|sort|uniq -c|sort -rn|head -30|awk '!max{max=$1;}{r="";i=s=100*$1/max;while(i-->0)r=r"#";printf "%50s %5d %s %s",$2,$1,r,"\n";}'
    injez · 2014-09-29 12:40:43 9
  • This checks the system load every second and if it's over a certain threshold (.8 in this example), it spits out the date, system loads and top 4 processes sorted by CPU. Additionally, the \a in the first echo creates an audible bell.


    1
    while sleep 1; do if [ $(echo "$(cat /proc/loadavg | cut -d' ' -f1) > .8 " | bc) -gt 0 ]; then echo -e "\n\a"$(date)" \e[5m"$(cat /proc/loadavg)"\e[0m"; ps aux --sort=-%cpu|head -n 5; fi; done
    tyzbit · 2014-12-08 15:44:40 8
  • Finds the date of the first commit in a git repository branch Show Sample Output


    1
    git rev-list --all|tail -n1|xargs git show|grep -v diff|head -n1|cut -f1-3 -d' '
    binaryten · 2015-02-04 19:35:16 11
  • I copied this (let's be honest) somewhere on internet and I just made it as a function ready to be used as alias. It shows the 10 most used commands from history. This seems to be just another "most used commands from history", but hey.. this is a function!!! :D Show Sample Output


    1
    mosth() { 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; }
    nnsense · 2015-05-11 17:41:55 19
  • Useful to identify the field number in big CSV files with large number of fields. The index is the reference to use in processing with commands like 'cut' or 'awk' involved. Show Sample Output


    1
    head -1 file.csv | tr ',' '\n' | tr -d " " | awk '{print NR,$0}'
    neomefistox · 2015-08-26 05:46:15 18

  • 1
    curl -sL http://goo.gl/3sA3iW | head -16 | tail -14
    cadejscroggins · 2015-09-19 07:19:49 10
  • You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials Show Sample Output


    1
    head -n1 | xargs -I {} aws sts get-session-token --serial-number $MFA_ID --duration-seconds 900 --token-code {} --output text --query [Credentials.AccessKeyId,Credentials.SecretAccessKey,Credentials.SessionToken]
    keymon · 2016-04-12 10:57:00 46

  • 1
    du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10
    zluyuer · 2016-05-27 04:05:08 12
  • sort -R randomize the list. head -n1 takes the first.


    1
    links `lynx -dump -listonly "http://news.google.com" | grep -Eo "(http|https)://[a-zA-Z0-9./?=_-]*" | grep -v "google.com" | sort -R | uniq | head -n1`
    mogoh · 2016-07-26 12:54:53 15

  • 1
    find / -path /proc -prune -o -type f -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %TT %p\n' | sort -r | head -50
    sidneycrestani · 2016-11-20 02:45:01 13
  • ‹ First  < 3 4 5 6 7 >  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

Use find to get around Argument list too long problem
Can be used for other commands as well, replace rm with ls. It is easy to make this shorter but if the filenames involved have spaces, you will need to do use find's "-print0" option in conjunction with xargs's "-0" option. Otherwise the shell that xargs uses to execute the "rm" command line will treat the space as a token separator, thereby treating the name as two (or more) names.

Default value or argument
I used it for this function, which prints hashes: function liner { num_lines=${1:-42} echo printf %${num_lines}s|tr " " "#" echo } Note the colon-dash, instead of the usual colon-equals.

Outputs files with ascii art in the intended form.
Files containing ascii art (e.g. with .nfo extension) are typically not correctly reproduced at the command line when using cat. With iconv one can easily write a wrapper to solve this: $ #!/bin/bash $ if [ -z "$@" ]; then echo "Usage: $(basename $0) file [file] ..." $ else iconv -f437 -tutf8 "$@"; fi $ exit 0

Watch the size of a directory using figlet
You can substitute /home/$USER with any path you like.

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

Real time satellite wheather wallpaper
Changes the wallpaper to the last satellite image. Tha url above shows latin america. Seek the best url for your location Now I have a usefull background image in my desktop I use it inside kalarm updating every 15 minutes. May be done with 'watch' instead It s an option to xplanet ( kde ) and xearth needs xli , curl

Restart Xen XAPI
Restarts the XAPI service on the host, mostly used by Xen Center. It does not affect any running VMs, just the Xen client tools that may be connected. On my list as XAPI frustratingly keeps running out of memory and getting killed off.

peak amount of memory occupied by any process with "FOO" in its name
Show the maximum amount of memory that was needed by a process at any time. My use case: Having a long-running computation job on $BIG_COMPUTER and judging whether it will also run on $SMALL_COMPUTER.   http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/proc.5.html VmHWM: Peak resident set size ("high water mark")

Equivalent to ifconfig -a in HPUX

Get the IP of the host your coming from when logged in remotely
Even faster without the need for cut... :)


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: