Commands using ls (517)

  • Returns the N most recently modified files from anywhere 'below' (and including) the current working directory, in order, with details.

    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 colored list items in less pager

    I've shortened it to: lsc PATH | l ... by adding ... alias lsc="ls --color" ... and ... alias l="less -R" ... to my ~/.bashrc file


    0
    ls --color PATH | less -R
    kevjonesin · 2016-03-07 13:46:02 13
  • Convert json files to tsv text blob

    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
  • Nicer ls, directories first and colorized (MacOS)

    It will print a compact ls -la list with the directories at the beginning. --almost-all - do not list implied . and .. --group-directories-first - group directories before files --color - colorize the output --no-group - in a long listing, don't print group names --human-readable - print human readable sizes (e.g., 1K 234M 2G) --classify - append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries If you want to see the owner: ls -l --almost-all --group-directories-first --color --no-group --human-readable --classify Show Sample Output


    0
    ls -g --almost-all --group-directories-first --color --no-group --human-readable --classify
    icatalina · 2016-04-15 17:12:35 13
  • List latest 5 modified files recursively

    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
  • Display "ls -l" output with color in less


    0
    ls -l --color | less -R
    Sparkette · 2016-05-07 17:19:56 11
  • Display a random man page


    0
    man $(ls /bin | shuf -n1)
    jubnzv · 2016-06-28 18:34:46 12
  • Let your computer read ls for you instead of reading it on your own

    Pipes the output of ls to espeak Also works nice with fortune fortune | espeak


    0
    ls | espeak
    BigZ · 2016-08-02 17:54:39 13
  • See how many times you've typed 'ls' by itself

    I seem to do this compulsively every time I change directories, sometimes even when I don't, even if I know exactly what I need to do. (Don't worry, the sample output is just an exaggeration. :) Show Sample Output


    0
    grep -cx ls ~/.bash_history
    Sparkette · 2016-09-14 17:06:59 17
  • List just the executable files (or directories) in current directory

    ls -l outputs long listing of files to awk, which sorts the output to include all lines that have the executable bit set (-x.), but excludes (!) the lines that have the directory bit set (drw), then prints the results to the screen. Show Sample Output


    0
    ls -l|awk ''/-x./' && !'/drw/' {print}'
    PCnetMD · 2016-09-21 14:42:10 15
  • Sum file sizes of found files


    0
    find . -mtime +30 -exec ls -all "{}" \; | awk '{COUNTER+=$5} END {SIZE=COUNTER/1024/1024; print "size sum of found files is: " SIZE "MB"}'
    breign · 2016-10-28 08:05:57 16
  • Resume incomplete youtube-dl video files

    Resume incomplete youtube-dl video files. Assuming mp4 format here.


    0
    ls *.part | sed 's/^.*-\(.\{11,11\}\)\.mp4\.part$/\1/g' - | youtube-dl -i -f mp4 -a -
    agp · 2017-02-28 23:31:55 21
  • Get the total length of all video / audio in the current dir (and below) in H:m:s

    All the other example fail when running in a folder containing too many files due to * being saturated. This command does not use *, allowing me to run it in one folder containing over 300000 audio files. As to running on so many files, I used GNU parallel in order to spawn as many processes as cores, tremendously fasting up the process. Show Sample Output


    0
    ls|grep ".wav"|parallel -j$(nproc) soxi -D {}|awk '{SUM += $1} END { printf "%d:%d:%d\n",SUM/3600,SUM%3600/60,SUM%60}'
    jupiter126 · 2017-05-02 21:37:24 20
  • Keep the last 10 moodle backups


    0
    ls -t /mcdata/archive/learn/backup-moodle2-course-* | tail -n +11 | xargs -I {} rm {}
    tlezotte · 2017-05-04 13:50:02 17
  • File count into directories

    Show file count into directories. Usefull when you try to find hugh directories that elevate system CPU (vmstat -> sy) Show Sample Output


    0
    find / -type d | while read i; do ls $i | wc -l | tr -d \\n; echo " -> $i"; done | sort -n
    Zort · 2017-05-12 00:02:43 19
  • Find Duplicate Files (based on size, name, and md5sum)

    It works extremely fast, because it calculates md5sum only on the files that have the same size and name. But there is nothing for free - it won't find duplicates with the different names. Show Sample Output


    0
    find -type f -printf '%20s\t%100f\t%p\n' | sort -n | uniq -Dw121 | awk -F'\t' '{print $3}' | xargs -d '\n' md5sum | uniq -Dw32 | cut -b 35- | xargs -d '\n' ls -lU
    ant7 · 2017-05-21 02:26:16 16
  • Find latest modified log


    0
    find . -name '*.log' | xargs ls -hlt > /tmp/logs.txt && vi /tmp/logs.txt
    zluyuer · 2017-07-07 05:13:51 20
  • When you realise your AMI doesn't come with NTP


    0
    AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="sa-east-1" jungle ec2 ls | grep midas | sort | cut -f4 | xargs -I {} ssh ubuntu@{} sudo apt-get install ntp -y
    xymor · 2017-11-22 19:20:08 19
  • Memorable recursive directory listing

    To HUNT for all the important stuffs. TRUST EL TRAPPER Works every time!


    0
    ls -ltrapR
    K33st · 2018-03-19 18:15:51 26
  • Determines latest pdf file downloaded by firefox in ~/Downloads directory


    0
    ls -tr ~/Downloads/*.pdf|tail -1
    masroor · 2018-05-14 14:01:55 161
  • Export all Stremio movie names

    I couldn't find movie library on any of the SQLlite Stremio databases, but on ~/.config/stremio/backgrounds2 the background image filenames corresponds to IMDB URL. So I foreach files and wget HTML title of each movie and save it to a file. This will retrieve all movie names, not just the Library.


    0
    time for movie in $(ls -1 $HOME/.config/stremio/backgrounds2 | sort -u);do echo "https://www.imdb.com/title/$movie/" | wget -qO- -O- -i- --header="Accept-Language: en" | hxclean | hxselect -s '\n' -c 'title' 2>/dev/null | tee -a ~/movie-list.txt ; done
    pabloab · 2018-08-16 06:11:41 319
  • watches every second, a directory listing as it changes

    On Linux, use watch -n 1 ls path/to/dir H/t: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9574123/805405 Show Sample Output


    0
    while :; do clear; ls path/to/dir | wc -l; sleep 1; done
    minademian · 2018-12-13 17:48:24 231
  • find all files that have 20 or more MB on every filesystem, change the size and filesystem to your liking

    find all files that have 20 or more MB on every filesystem, change the size and filesystem to your liking


    0
    find / -type f -size +20000k -exec ls -lh {} \; 2> /dev/null | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }' | sort -nrk 2,2
    Marius · 2019-07-08 21:04:09 37
  • Check out hijacked files in clearcase


    -1
    cleartool co -nc `cleartool ls -recurse | grep "hijacked" | sed s/\@\@.*// | xargs`
    ultrahax · 2009-02-06 00:03:51 51
  • Store mp3 playlist on variable and play with mpg123

    On my music directory, I create variable that contains all mp3s files, then I play them with mpg123. -C options enable terminal control key, s for stop, p for pause, f for forward to next song.


    -1
    PLAYLIST=$(ls -1) ; mpg123 -C $PLAYLIST
    servermanaged · 2009-03-19 17:20:28 12
  • ‹ First  < 13 14 15 16 17 >  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

Limit the transfer rate and size of data over a pipe
This example will close the pipe after transferring 100MB at a speed of 3MB per second.

no # comments, blank lines, white space. # can start in any column
The shortest and most complete comment/blank line remover... Any line where the first non-whitespace character is # (ie, indented # comments), and all null and blank lines are removed. Use the alias as a filter: $ noc /etc/hosts or $ grep server /etc/hosts | noc Change to nawk depending awk versions.

Monitor incoming connections of proxies and balancers.
Maybe this will help you to monitor your load balancers or reverse proxies if you happen to use them. This is useful to discover TIME OUTS and this will let you know if one or more of your application servers is not connected by checking.

Convert embedded spaces in filenames to "_" (underscore)
This command converts filenames with embedded spaces in the current directory replacing spaces with the underscore ("_") character.

Fetch the current human population of Earth
Fetches the world population JSON data from the US census and parses it uses jshon

Create a continuous digital clock in Linux terminal
Same effect, only shell commands.

Extract dd-image from VirtualBox VDI container and mount it
Tested with NTFS and found on this site: http://forensicir.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtualbox-and-forensics-tools.html The first 32256 bytes is the MBR

Binary search/replace
Replace all instances of "A" with "B" in file "source" saved as file "destination". !! IF A/B is multi-byte, then separate bytes with spaces like so: "s/20\ 0A/00/g".

Run the built in PHP-server in current folder
You must have PHP 5.4.0 or later to be able to run the built in server. This web server is designed for developmental purposes only, and should not be used in production. URI requests are served from the current working directory where PHP was started, unless the -t option is used to specify an explicit document root. If a URI request does not specify a file, then either index.php or index.html in the given directory are returned. If neither file exists, then a 404 response code is returned. If a PHP file is given on the command line when the web server is started it is treated as a "router" script. The script is run at the start of each HTTP request. If this script returns FALSE, then the requested resource is returned as-is. Otherwise the script's output is returned to the browser. Standard MIME types are returned for files with extensions: .css, .gif, .htm, .html, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .js, .png, .svg, and .txt. The .htm and .svg extensions are recognized from PHP 5.4.4 onwards. More information here: http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php

Get all mac address
I prefer the ip command to ifconfig as ifconfig is supposedly going to be deprecated. Certain IP address aliases can only be seen with the ip command (such as the ones applied by RHCS).

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: