Commands using head (314)

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Convert all .wav to .mp3
Audio convert is a script that uses zenity and lame to transcode virtually any format to any other format provided you have the libraries installed to do so.

find and grep Word docs
Find Word docs by filename in the current directory, convert each of them to plain text using antiword (taking care of spaces in filenames), then grep for a search term in the particular file. (Of course, it's better to save your data as plain text to make for easier grepping, but that's not always possible.) Requires antiword. Or you can modify it to use catdoc instead.

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"

Burn an ISO on the command line.

Share a file quickly using a python web server
Raise your hand if you haven't used this at least once to share a directory quickly

View any already in progress copy command in detail
If you spot a dubious looking cp command running you can use this command to view what is being copied and to where. 1234 is the PID of the cp command being passed to the lsof utility. 3r.*REG will display the file/directory that is being read/copied. 4w.*REG will display the destination it is being written to.

uniq for unsorted data

Convert encoding of given files from one encoding to another

Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.
The function will take a comma separated list of items to be 'selected' by xsel -i: $ smenu "First item to paste,Paste me #2,Third menu item" You will then be prompted to choose one of the menu items. After you choose, you will be able to paste the string by clicking the middle mouse button. The menu will keep prompting you to choose menu items until you break out with Control-C.

check the status of 'dd' in progress (OS X)
"killall -USR1 dd" does not work in OS X for me. However, sending INFO instead of USR1 works.


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