Commands using perl (369)

  • modify a file in place with perl

    changes THIS to THAT in all files matching fileglob* without using secondary files


    2
    perl -pi -e 's/THIS/THAT/g' fileglob*
    elofland · 2009-02-05 19:19:52 60
  • The top ten commands you use

    Show Sample Output


    2
    perl -pe 's/.+;//' ~/.zsh_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -r|head -10
    aoiaoi · 2009-02-06 15:24:32 168
  • re-assign line numbers

    Show Sample Output


    2
    perl -pe 's/\d+/++$n/e' file.txt
    mikeda · 2009-02-17 14:51:31 6
  • Comma insertions

    Insert a comma where necessary when counting large numbers. I needed to separate huge amounts of packets and after 12+ hours of looking in a terminal, I wanted it in readable form. Show Sample Output


    2
    perl -pe '$_=reverse;s/\d{3}(?=\d)(?!.*?\.)/$&,/g;$_=reverse'
    sil · 2009-02-18 16:34:18 15
  • Recursive Search and Replace

    Finds the string in every file in an entire directory and all its subdirectories and replaces it with a new string. Especially useful when changing a machine's IP address or hostname - run it on /etc.


    2
    perl -pi -e's/<what to find>/<what to replace it with>/g' `grep -Rl <what to find> /<dir>/*`
    adampbell · 2009-02-26 19:14:39 8
  • make a list of movies(.m3u).


    2
    find $HOME -type f -print | perl -wnlaF'/' -e 'BEGIN{ print "#EXTM3U"; } /.+\.wmv$|.+\.mpg$|.+\.vob$/i and print "#EXTINF:$F[-1]\nfile://$&";' > movies.m3u
    ishiduca · 2009-02-28 12:17:41 4
  • Prints any IP out of a file


    2
    perl -ne 'while (/([0-9]+\.){3}[0-9]+/g) {print "$&\n"};' file.txt
    P17 · 2009-04-01 13:49:46 6
  • Connect to all running screen instances

    There was another line that was dependent on having un-named screen sessions. This just wouldn't do. This one works no matter what the name is. A possible improvement would be removing the perl dependence, but that doesn't effect me.


    2
    for i in `screen -ls | perl -ne'if(/^\s+\d+\.([^\s]+)/){print $1, " "}'`; do gnome-terminal -e "screen -x $i"; done
    hank · 2009-04-25 22:39:24 7
  • Replace Every occurrence of a word in a file

    Replace 'this' with 'that'


    2
    perl -p -i -e 's/this/that/g' filename
    rader5 · 2009-08-09 20:53:50 8
  • show the real times iso of epochs for a given column

    When you have one of those (log)files that only has epoch for time (since no one will ever look at them as a date) this is a way to get the human readable date/time and do further inspection. Mostly perl-fu :-/


    2
    perl -F' ' -MDate::Format -pale 'substr($_, index($_, $F[1]), length($F[1]), time2str("%C", $F[1]))' file.log
    coffeeaddict_nl · 2009-08-13 13:57:33 4
  • convert unixtime to human-readable


    2
    perl -e 'print scalar(gmtime(1234567890)), "\n"'
    andrew112358 · 2009-08-25 15:00:52 4
  • Go get those photos from a Picasa album


    2
    wget 'link of a Picasa WebAlbum' -O - |perl -e'while(<>){while(s/"media":{"content":\[{"url":"(.+?\.JPG)//){print "$1\n"}}' |wget -w1 -i -
    aciancone · 2009-09-27 14:36:27 7
  • A command line calculator in Perl

    Once I wrote a command line calculator program in C, then I found this... and added to it a bit. For ease of use I normally use this in a tiny Perl program (which I call pc for 'Perl Calculator') #!/usr/bin/perl -w die "Usage: $0 MATHS\n" unless(@ARGV);for(@ARGV){s/x/*/g;s/v/sqrt /g;s/\^/**/g}; print eval(join('',@ARGV)),$/; It handles square roots, power, modulus: pc 1+2 (1 plus 2) 3 pc 3x4 (3 times 4) 12 pc 5^6 (5 to the power of 6) 15625 pc v 49 ( square root of 49 ) 7 pc 12/3 (12 divided by 3) 4 pc 19%4 (19 modulus 4) 3 (you can string maths together too) pc 10 x 10 x 10 1000 pc 10 + 10 + 10 / 2 25 pc 7 x v49 49 Show Sample Output


    2
    perl -e 'for(@ARGV){s/x/*/g;s/v/sqrt /g;s/\^/**/g};print eval(join("",@ARGV)),$/;'
    JohnGH · 2009-12-21 21:03:27 9
  • Recursively grep for string and format output for vi(m)

    This is a big time saver for me. I often grep source code and need to edit the findings. A single highlight of the mouse and middle mouse click (in gnome terminal) and I'm editing the exact line I just found. The color highlighting helps interpret the data.


    2
    mgc() { grep --exclude=cscope* --color=always -rni $1 . |perl -pi -e 's/:/ +/' |perl -pi -e 's/^(.+)$/vi $1/g' |perl -pi -e 's/:/ /'; }
    stinkerweed999 · 2010-01-26 17:00:01 4
  • Get your commandlinefu points (upvotes - downvotes)

    Like command #4845, prints score, number of entries, and average score.


    2
    username=bartonski;curl -s http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/by/$username/json|perl -e 'BEGIN{$s=0;$n=0};END{print "Score: $s\nEntries: $n\nMean: ";printf "%3.2f\n",$s/$n}' -0173 -nae 'foreach $f (@F){if($f =~ /"votes":"(-*\d+)"/){$s += $1; $n++;}}'
    bartonski · 2010-02-16 01:03:29 4
  • Update twitter with Perl

    Requires Net::Twitter. Just replace the double quoted strings with the appropriate info.


    2
    perl -MNet::Twitter -e '$nt = Net::Twitter->new(traits => [qw/API::REST/], username => "YOUR USERNAME", password => "YOUR PASSWORD"); $ud = $nt->update("YOUR TWEET");'
    dbbolton · 2010-06-16 19:46:05 4
  • diff files while disregarding indentation and trailing white space

    **NOTE** Tekhne's alternative is much more succinct and its output conforms to the files actual contents rather than with white space removed My command on the other hand uses bash process substitution (and "Minimal" Perl), instead of files, to first remove leading and trailing white space from lines, before diff'ing the streams. Very useful when differences in indentation, such as in programming source code files, may be irrelevant Show Sample Output


    2
    diff <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file1) <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file2)
    jemptymethod · 2010-10-06 19:14:42 5
  • Decode base64-encoded file in one line of Perl

    If you are in an environment where you don't have the base64 executable or MIME tools available, this can be very handy for salvaging email attachments when the headers are mangled but the encoded document itself is intact.


    2
    perl -MMIME::Base64 -ne 'print decode_base64($_)' < file.txt > out
    dmmst19 · 2010-12-13 23:35:20 3
  • Find C/C++ source code comments

    This is a naive way of finding source code comments in source code files that use C-like comments: // and /*...*/


    2
    perl -e 'my $in_comment = 0; while (<>) { $in_comment = 1 if m{\Q/*\E}; print if $in_comment; $in_comment = 0 if m{\Q*/\E}; }' *.cpp
    doherty · 2011-07-08 00:17:27 4
  • Find default gateway (proper at ppp connections too)


    2
    route -n | perl -ne '$ANY="0.0.0.0"; /^$ANY/ and split /\s+/ and print "Gateway to the World: ",($_[1]!=$ANY)?$_[1]:(`ip address show $_[$#_]`=~/peer ([0-9\.]+)/ and $1),", via $_[$#_].\n"'
    bandie91 · 2011-09-13 08:05:58 5
  • FizzBuzz One-liner


    2
    perl -le 'print$_%3?$_%5?$_:"Buzz":$_%5?"Fizz":"FizzBuzz"for 1..100'
    depesz · 2012-01-10 13:10:30 5
  • Remove a range of lines from a file

    Show Sample Output


    2
    perl -i -ne 'print if $. == 3..5' <filename>
    bashrc · 2012-01-27 23:15:10 4
  • Apache CLF access log format to CSV converter

    - excel date compatible with a separate hour field - added a fixed 1 for easier request counter aggregation - split URL in directory, filename, fileext, query - used with tomcat valve with response bytes replaced by elapsed time Show Sample Output


    2
    #(see sample) $ cat x | perl -pe 'BEGIN{ print "TIME;...\n"; } s!(\S+) - (\S+) - \[(\d\d)/(\S\S\S)/(\S+):(\d\d):(\d\d:\d\d) \S+\] "(\S+) (.*/)(\S+)(?:\.([^?]*)(\?\S*)?) HTTP/\S+" (\d+) (\S+)!$3-$4-$5 $6:$7;$6;$2;$1;$8;$13;1;$14;$11;$10;$9;$12;!' > x.csv
    hute37 · 2012-02-10 16:58:50 3
  • Text graphing ping output filter

    Nasty perl one-liner that provides a sparkline of ping times. If you want a different history than the last 30, just put that value in. It (ab)uses unicode to draw the bars, inspired by https://github.com/joemiller/spark-ping . It's not the most bug-free piece of code, but what it lacks in robustness it makes up for in capability. :) If anyone has any ideas on how to make it more compact or better, I'd love to hear them. I included a ping to google in the command just as an example (and burned up 10 chars doing it!). You should use it with: $ ping example.com | $SPARKLINE_PING_COMMAND Show Sample Output


    2
    ping g.co|perl -ne'$|=/e=(\S+)/||next;(push@_,$1)>30&&shift@_;print"\r",(map{"\xe2\x96".chr(128+7*$_/(sort{$b<=>$a}@_)[0])." "}@_),"$1ms"'
    bartgrantham · 2012-07-06 22:42:06 3
  • MPD + Digitally Imported

    1.- Enter into the playlist path. 2.- Run the command. 3.- Playlists created!


    2
    wget -q -O - http://listen.di.fm/public2 | sed 's/},{/\n/g' | perl -n -e '/"key":"([^"]*)".*"playlist":"([^"]*)"/; print "$1\n"; system("wget -q -O - $2 | grep -E '^File' | cut -d= -f2 > di_$1.m3u")'
    Zort · 2013-02-20 03:37:41 9
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Mount a VMware virtual disk (.vmdk) file on a Linux box
Assumes XP/2000/2003. For Server 2008+ try offset=105,906,176 You can find this number in the System Information utility under Partition Starting Offset. UEFI based boxes you want partition 2 since the first is just the boot files (and FAT). This works with (storage side) snapshots which is handy for single file restores on NFS mounted VMware systems

Open Remote Desktop (RDP) from command line having a custom screen size
This example uses xfreerdp, which builds upon the development of rdesktop. This example usage will also send you the remote machine's sound.

List processes sorted by CPU usage

faster version of ls *
I know its not much but is very useful in time consuming scripts (cron, rc.d, etc).

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Record a screencast and convert it to an mpeg
Grab X11 input and create an MPEG at 25 fps with the resolution 800x600

Lists unambigously names of all xml elements used in files in current directory
This set of commands was very convenient for me when I was preparing some xml files for typesetting a book. I wanted to check what styles I had to prepare but coudn't remember all tags that I used. This one saved me from error-prone browsing of all my files. It should be also useful if one tries to process xml files with xsl, when using own xml application.

Recurse through directories easily
This is a simple case of recursing through all directories, adding the '.bak' extension to every file. Of course, the 'cp $file $file.bak' could be any code you need to apply to your recursion, including tests, other functions, creating variables, doing math, etc. Simple and clean recursion.

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"

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