Commands using perl (369)

  • Probably only works with GNU du and modern perls. Show Sample Output


    36
    du -b --max-depth 1 | sort -nr | perl -pe 's{([0-9]+)}{sprintf "%.1f%s", $1>=2**30? ($1/2**30, "G"): $1>=2**20? ($1/2**20, "M"): $1>=2**10? ($1/2**10, "K"): ($1, "")}e'
    mrtheplague · 2009-02-20 06:11:31 40
  • parse `lsmod' output and pass to `dot' drawing utility then finally pass it to an image viewer


    35
    lsmod | perl -e 'print "digraph \"lsmod\" {";<>;while(<>){@_=split/\s+/; print "\"$_[0]\" -> \"$_\"\n" for split/,/,$_[3]}print "}"' | dot -Tpng | display -
    bandie91 · 2011-11-27 14:02:35 23
  • OK, not the most useful but a good way to impress friends. Requires the "display" command from ImageMagick.


    25
    perl -e 'print "P1\n256 256\n", map {$_&($_>>8)?1:0} (0..0xffff)' | display
    dstahlke · 2009-07-08 17:50:23 29
  • This one-liner will the *delete* without any further confirmation all 100% duplicates but one based on their md5 hash in the current directory tree (i.e including files in its subdirectories). Good for cleaning up collections of mp3 files or pictures of your dog|cat|kids|wife being present in gazillion incarnations on hd. md5sum can be substituted with sha1sum without problems. The actual filename is not taken into account-just the hash is used. Whatever sort thinks is the first filename is kept. It is assumed that the filename does not contain 0x00. As per the good suggestion in the first comment, this one does a hard link instead: find . -xdev -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | perl -ne 'chomp; $ph=$h; ($h,$f)=split(/\s+/,$_,2); if ($h ne $ph) { $k = $f; } else { unlink($f); link($k, $f); }' Show Sample Output


    19
    find . -type f -print0|xargs -0 md5sum|sort|perl -ne 'chomp;$ph=$h;($h,$f)=split(/\s+/,$_,2);print "$f"."\x00" if ($h eq $ph)'|xargs -0 rm -v --
    masterofdisaster · 2009-06-07 03:14:06 15
  • This function takes a word or a phrase as arguments and then fetches definitions using Google's "define" syntax. The "nl" and perl portion isn't strictly necessary. It just makes the output a bit more readable, but this also works: define(){ local y="$@";curl -sA"Opera" "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:${y// /+}"|grep -Po '(?<=<li>)[^<]+';} If your version of grep doesn't have perl compatible regex support, then you can use this version: define(){ local y="$@";curl -sA"Opera" "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:${y// /+}"|grep -Eo '<li>[^<]+'|sed 's/<li>//g'|nl|perl -MHTML::Entities -pe 'decode_entities($_)' 2>/dev/null;} Show Sample Output


    18
    define(){ local y="$@";curl -sA"Opera" "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:${y// /+}"|grep -Po '(?<=<li>)[^<]+'|nl|perl -MHTML::Entities -pe 'decode_entities($_)' 2>/dev/null;}
    eightmillion · 2010-01-29 05:01:11 31
  • tail with coloured output with the help of perl - need more colours? here is a colour table: http://www.tuxify.de/?p=23 Show Sample Output


    17
    tail -f FILE | perl -pe 's/KEYWORD/\e[1;31;43m$&\e[0m/g'
    tuxifier · 2009-06-02 21:31:54 22
  • Can be run as a script `ftrace` if my_command is substrituted with "$@" It is useful when running a command that fails and you have the feeling it is accessing a file you are not aware of. Show Sample Output


    17
    strace -ff -e trace=file my_command 2>&1 | perl -ne 's/^[^"]+"(([^\\"]|\\[\\"nt])*)".*/$1/ && print'
    unixmonkey8046 · 2011-08-16 15:00:18 10
  • Print out list of all branches with last commit date to the branch, including relative time since commit and color coding. Show Sample Output


    16
    for k in `git branch|perl -pe s/^..//`;do echo -e `git show --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%ci %Cblue%cr%Creset" $k|head -n 1`\\t$k;done|sort -r
    brunost · 2009-06-03 08:25:00 351

  • 15
    perl -le 'print $!+0, "\t", $!++ for 0..127'
    voidpointer · 2010-01-12 17:33:50 23
  • attribution: Thanks to repellent on perlmonks.org source: http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=684459


    13
    cat typescript | perl -pe 's/\e([^\[\]]|\[.*?[a-zA-Z]|\].*?\a)//g' | col -b > typescript-processed
    unixmonkey3987 · 2009-05-28 21:02:17 22
  • works on Linux and Solaris. I think it will work on nearly all *nix-es Show Sample Output


    13
    ifconfig -a | perl -nle'/(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)/ && print $1'
    sneaker · 2009-07-31 09:49:17 9
  • This is a command that I find myself using all the time. It works like regular grep, but returns the paragraph containing the search pattern instead of just the line. It operates on files or standard input. grepp <PATTERN> <FILE> or <SOMECOMMAND> | grepp <PATTERN> Show Sample Output


    13
    grepp() { [ $# -eq 1 ] && perl -00ne "print if /$1/i" || perl -00ne "print if /$1/i" < "$2";}
    eightmillion · 2010-01-12 04:30:15 20
  • Fetches the IPs and ONLY the IPs from ifconfig. Simplest, shortest, cleanest. Perl is too good to be true... (P.S.: credit should go to Peteris Krumins at catonmat.net) Show Sample Output


    11
    ifconfig | perl -nle'/dr:(\S+)/ && print $1'
    xsawyerx · 2009-07-23 09:33:31 11
  • Silly Perl variant.


    11
    perl -e '$|++; while (1) { print " " x (rand(35) + 1), int(rand(2)) }'
    MarxBro · 2012-09-27 22:46:39 33
  • the addition of ".bk" to the regular "pie" idiom makes perl create a backup of every file with the extension ".bk", in case it b0rks something and you want it back


    10
    perl -pi.bk -e's/foo/bar/g' file1 file2 fileN
    xsawyerx · 2009-01-29 09:51:11 95
  • change the *.avi to whatever you want to match, you can remove it altogether if you want to check all files.


    10
    find -type f -name "*.avi" -print0 | xargs -0 mplayer -vo dummy -ao dummy -identify 2>/dev/null | perl -nle '/ID_LENGTH=([0-9\.]+)/ && ($t +=$1) && printf "%02d:%02d:%02d\n",$t/3600,$t/60%60,$t%60' | tail -n 1
    grokskookum · 2009-09-24 15:50:39 34
  • My Programming Languages professor assigned my class a homework assignment where we had to write a Perl interpreter using Perl. I really like Python's interactive command line interpreter which inspired this Perl script.


    10
    perl -e 'while(1){print"> ";eval<>}'
    kzh · 2010-02-03 21:48:33 430
  • Fun idea! This one adds seconds and keeps running on the same line. Perl's probably cheating though. :)


    10
    perl -e 'for(;;){@d=split("",`date +%H%M%S`);print"\r";for(0..5){printf"%.4b ",$d[$_]}sleep 1}'
    putnamhill · 2010-12-04 00:05:54 9
  • The above one-liner could be run against all HTML files in a directory. It renames the HTML files based on the text contained in their title tag. This helped me in a situation where I had a directory containing thousands of HTML documents with meaningless filenames.


    10
    perl -wlne'/title>([^<]+)/i&&rename$ARGV,"$1.html"' *.html
    mhs · 2010-12-29 05:39:41 9
  • The Linux /dev/full file simulates a "disk full" condition, and can be used to verify how a program handles this situation. In particular, several programming language implementations do not print error diagnostics (nor exit with error status) when I/O errors like this occur, unless the programmer has taken additional steps. That is, simple code in these languages does not fail safely. In addition to Perl, C, C++, Tcl, and Lua (for some functions) also appear not to fail safely. Show Sample Output


    9
    perl -e 'print 1, 2, 3' > /dev/full
    mkc · 2009-02-19 17:08:13 13

  • 9
    perl -e 'for(;;sleep 1){printf"\r"."%.4b "x6,split"",`date +%H%M%S`}'
    unixmonkey74668 · 2015-04-26 08:48:20 10
  • Each shell function has its own summary line, as a comment. If there are multiple shell functions with the same name, the function with the highest number of votes is put into the file. Note: added 'grep -v' to the end of the pipeline, to eliminate extraneous lines containing only '--'. Thanks to matthewbauer for pointing this out.


    8
    export QQ=$(mktemp -d);(cd $QQ; curl -s -O http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse/sort-by-votes/plaintext/[0-2400:25];for i in $(perl -ne 'print "$1\n" if( /^(\w+\(\))/ )' *|sort -u);do grep -h -m1 -B1 $i *; done)|grep -v '^--' > clf.sh;rm -r $QQ
    bartonski · 2010-01-30 19:47:42 41
  • Based on the execute with timeout command in this site. A more complex script: #!/bin/sh # This script will check the avaliability of a list of NFS mount point, # forcing a remount of those that do not respond in 5 seconds. # # It basically does this: # NFSPATH=/mountpoint TIMEOUT=5; perl -e "alarm $TIMEOUT; exec @ARGV" "test -d $NFSPATH" || (umount -fl $NFSPATH; mount $NFSPATH) # TIMEOUT=5 SCRIPT_NAME=$(basename $0) for i in $@; do echo "Checking $i..." if ! perl -e "alarm $TIMEOUT; exec @ARGV" "test -d $i" > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "$SCRIPT_NAME: $i is failing with retcode $?."1>&2 echo "$SCRIPT_NAME: Submmiting umount -fl $i" 1>&2 umount -fl $i; echo "$SCRIPT_NAME: Submmiting mount $i" 1>&2 mount $i; fi done


    8
    NFSPATH=/mountpoint TIMEOUT=5; perl -e "alarm $TIMEOUT; exec @ARGV" "test -d $NFSPATH" || (umount -fl $NFSPATH; mount $NFSPATH)
    keymon · 2010-06-04 07:59:00 6
  • Just want to post a Perl alternative. Does not count hidden files ('.' ones). Show Sample Output


    8
    perl -le 'print ~~ map {-s} <*>'
    MarxBro · 2012-02-21 21:09:48 6
  • bash.org is a collection of funny quotes from IRC. WARNING: some of the quotes contain "adult" jokes... may be embarrassing if your boss sees them... Thanks to Chen for the idea and initial version! This script downloads a page with random quotes, filters the html to retrieve just one liners quotes and outputs the first one. Just barely under the required 255 chars :) Improvment: You can replace the head -1 at the end by: awk 'length($0)>0 {printf( $0 "\n%%\n" )}' > bash_quotes.txt which will separate the quotes with a "%" and place it in the file. and then: strfile bash_quotes.txt which will make the file ready for the fortune command and then you can: fortune bash_quotes.txt which will give you a random quote from those in the downloaded file. I download a file periodically and then use the fortune in .bashrc so I see a funny quote every time I open a terminal. Show Sample Output


    7
    curl -s http://bash.org/?random1|grep -oE "<p class=\"quote\">.*</p>.*</p>"|grep -oE "<p class=\"qt.*?</p>"|sed -e 's/<\/p>/\n/g' -e 's/<p class=\"qt\">//g' -e 's/<p class=\"qt\">//g'|perl -ne 'use HTML::Entities;print decode_entities($_),"\n"'|head -1
    Iftah · 2009-05-07 13:13:21 17
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concatenate avi files
concatenates avi files

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Perpetual calendar
Gets any date since today. Other examples of recognized expressions are "2 years 4 days ago", "7 months" (in the future), "next Sunday", "yesterday", "tomorrow", etc.

Find usb device
I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

List latest 5 modified files recursively
The output format is given by the -printf parameter: %T@ = modify time in seconds since Jan. 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT, with fractional part. Mandatory, hidden in the end. %TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM:%.2TS = modify time as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Optional. %p = file path Refer to http://linux.die.net/man/1/find for more about -printf formatting. ------------------------ sort -nr = sort numerically and reverse (higher values - most recent timestamp - first) head -n 5 = get only 5 first lines (change 5 to whatever you want) cut -f2- -d" " = trim first field (timestamp, used only for sorting) ------------------------ Very useful for building scripts for detecting malicious files upload and malware injections.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Get the IP address

List last opened tabs in firefox browser
Tuned for short command line - you can set the path to sessionstore.js more reliable instead of use asterixes etc. Usable when you are not at home and really need to get your actual opened tabs on your home computer (via SSH). I am using it from my work if I forgot to bookmark some new interesting webpage, which I have visited at home. Also other way to list tabs when your firefox has crashed (restoring of tabs doesn't work always). This script includes also tabs which has been closed short time before.

Debian Runlevel configuration tool
This tool configures system services in connection with system runlevels. It turns on/off services using the scripts in /etc/init.d/. Rcconf works with System-V style runlevel configuration. It is a TUI(Text User Interface) frontend to the update-rc.d command.

Sorts and compare 2 files line by line


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