Commands using sed (1,319)

  • Get Lorum Ipsum random text from lorumipsum.com

    This will generate 3 paragraphs with random text. Change the 3 to any number. Show Sample Output


    5
    lynx -source http://www.lipsum.com/feed/xml?amount=3|perl -p -i -e 's/\n/\n\n/g'|sed -n '/<lipsum>/,/<\/lipsum>/p'|sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g'
    houghi · 2010-04-26 17:26:44 5
  • Prepare a commandlinefu command.

    This command will format your alias or function to a single line, trimming duplicate white space and newlines and inserting delimiter semi-colons, so it continues to work on a single line. Show Sample Output


    5
    goclf() { type "$1" | sed '1d' | tr -d "\n" | tr -s '[:space:]'; echo }
    meathive · 2010-06-26 21:44:17 17
  • Get all shellcode on binary file from objdump

    Tired copy paste to get opcode from objdump huh ? Get more @ http://gunslingerc0de.wordpress.com Show Sample Output


    5
    objdump -d ./PROGRAM|grep '[0-9a-f]:'|grep -v 'file'|cut -f2 -d:|cut -f1-6 -d' '|tr -s ' '|tr '\t' ' '|sed 's/ $//g'|sed 's/ /\\x/g'|paste -d '' -s |sed 's/^/"/'|sed 's/$/"/g'
    gunslinger_ · 2010-07-11 15:44:48 112
  • Convert ascii string to hex

    If you're going to use od, here's how to suppress the labels at the beginning. Also, it doesn't output the \x, hence the sed command at the end. Remove it for space separated hex values instead Show Sample Output


    5
    echo -n "text" | od -A n -t x1 |sed 's/ /\\x/g'
    camocrazed · 2010-07-14 15:31:36 8
  • Remove color codes (special characters) with sed


    5
    sed -r "s:\x1B\[[0-9;]*[mK]::g"'
    roylez · 2010-07-22 05:37:25 6
  • livehttpheaders (firefox addon) replacement

    Default output-file is "liveh.txt". This uses only BRE, in case you're using an older version of sed(1) that doesn't have support for ERE added. With a modern sed(1), to reduce false positive matches, you might do something like: liveh(){ tcpdump -lnnAs512 -i ${1-} tcp |sed 's/.*GET /GET /;s/.*Host: /Host: /;s/.*POST /POST /;/GET |Host: |POST /!d;/[\"'"'"]/d;/\.\./d;w '"${2-liveh.txt}"'' >/dev/null ;} Anyway, it's easy to clean up the output file with sed(1) later.


    5
    liveh(){ tcpdump -lnAs512 ${1-} tcp |sed ' s/.*GET /GET /;s/.*Host: /Host: /;s/.*POST /POST /;/[GPH][EOo][TSs]/!d;w '"${2-liveh.txt}"' ' >/dev/null ;} # usage: liveh [-i interface] [output-file] && firefox &
    argv · 2010-10-11 01:01:11 3
  • Google Translate

    substitute "example" with desired string; tl = target language (en, fr, de, hu, ...); you can leave sl parameter as-is (autodetection works fine) Show Sample Output


    5
    wget -U "Mozilla/5.0" -qO - "http://translate.google.com/translate_a/t?client=t&text=translation+example&sl=auto&tl=fr" | sed 's/\[\[\[\"//' | cut -d \" -f 1
    sairon · 2011-03-06 13:46:16 109
  • remove empty lines in place with backup

    Modify file in place to remove empty lines and create a backup of the original with the extension .bak Show Sample Output


    5
    sed -e '/^$/d' -i .bak filewithempty.lines
    donnoman · 2011-03-24 00:03:25 6
  • Get a BOFH excuse

    Gets a BOFH excuse from the BOFH excuse server (towel.blinkenlights.nl port 666), and passes it through sed and tr to get rid of telnet connection stuff. Show Sample Output


    5
    telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 | sed "s/=== The BOFH Excuse Server ===//" | tr -d '\n' && echo
    hintss · 2011-03-31 05:50:57 3
  • Get International Space Station sighting information for your city

    This command outputs a table of sighting opportunities for the International Space Station. Find the URL for your city here: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ Show Sample Output


    5
    links -dump "http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/view.cgi?country=United_States&region=Wisconsin&city=Portage" | sed -n '/--/,/--/p'
    eightmillion · 2011-05-03 12:15:56 7
  • full memcache client in under 255 chars (uses dd, sed and nc)

    usage: mem memcache-command [arguments] where memcache-command might be: set add get[s] append prepend replace delete incr decr cas stats verbosity version notes: exptime argument is set to 0 (no expire) flags argument is set to 1 (arbitrary)


    5
    mem(){ { case $1 in st*|[vgid]*) printf "%s " "$@";; *) dd if=$3 2>&1|sed '$!d;/^0/d;s/ .*//;s/^/'"$1"' '"$2"' 1 0 /; r '"$3"'' 2>/dev/null;;esac;printf "\r\nquit\r\n";}|nc -n 127.0.0.1 11211; }
    argv · 2011-06-17 06:39:07 6
  • Prepend a text to a file.

    Using the sed -i (inline), you can replace the beginning of the first line of a file without redirecting the output to a temporary location.


    5
    sed -i '1s/^/text to prepend\n/' file1
    xeor · 2011-06-25 12:02:11 14
  • Search and Replace across multiple files

    - grep for the word in a files, use recursion (to find files in sub directories), and list only file matches -| xargs passes the results from the grep command to sed -sed -i uses a regular expression (regex) to evaluate the change: s (search) / search word / target word / g (global replace)


    5
    grep -lr -e '<oldword>' * | xargs sed -i 's/<oldword>/<newword>/g'
    o0110o · 2011-08-27 02:42:51 7
  • regex for turning a URL into a real hyperlink (i.e. for posting somewhere that accepts basic html)

    This should work with anything://url.whatever etc etc ;)


    5
    sed "s/\([a-zA-Z]*\:\/\/[^ ]*\)\(.*\)/\<a href=\"\1\"\>\1\<\/a\>\2/"
    c3w · 2012-01-04 02:08:29 7
  • Use top to monitor only all processes with the same name fragment 'foo'

    pgrep foo may return several pids for process foobar footy01 etc. like this: 11427 12576 12577 sed puts "-p " in front and we pass a list to top: top -p 11427 -p 12576 -p 12577


    5
    top $(pgrep foo | sed 's|^|-p |g')
    michelsberg · 2012-06-14 15:13:00 3
  • run shell with your commandlinefu.com's favourites as bash_history

    This makes your commandlinefu.com's favorites appear as most recent commands in your history.


    5
    (cat ~/.bash_history;U='curl -s www.commandlinefu.com';$U/users/signin -c/tmp/.c -d'username=<USER>&password=<PASS>&submit=1'|$U/commands/favourites/json -b/tmp/.c|grep -Po 'nd":.*?[^\\]",'|sed -re 's/.*":"(.*)",/\1/g')>~/.h;HISTFILE=~/.h bash --login
    xenomuta · 2012-08-17 12:31:51 34
  • Encrypt and password-protect execution of any bash script

    (Please see sample output for usage) script.bash is your script, which will be crypted to script.secure script.bash --> script.secure You can execute script.secure only if you know the password. If you die, your script dies with you. If you modify the startup line, be careful with the offset calculation of the crypted block (the XX string). Not difficult to make script editable (an offset-dd piped to a gpg -d piped to a vim - piped to a gpg -c directed to script.new ), but not enough space to do it on a one liner. Show Sample Output


    5
    echo "eval \"\$(dd if=\$0 bs=1 skip=XX 2>/dev/null|gpg -d 2>/dev/null)\"; exit" > script.secure; sed -i s:XX:$(stat -c%s script.secure): script.secure; gpg -c < script.bash >> script.secure; chmod +x script.secure
    rodolfoap · 2013-03-09 11:16:48 20
  • Graphically show percent of mount space used

    Automatically drops mount points that have non-numeric sizes (e.g. /proc). Tested in bash on Linux and AIX. Show Sample Output


    5
    for m in `df -P | awk -F ' ' '{print $NF}' | sed -e "1d"`;do n=`df -P | grep "$m$" | awk -F ' ' '{print $5}' | cut -d% -f1`;i=0;if [[ $n =~ ^-?[0-9]+$ ]];then printf '%-25s' $m;while [ $i -lt $n ];do echo -n '=';let "i=$i+1";done;echo " $n";fi;done
    drockney · 2013-07-29 20:12:39 6
  • Convert a script to one-liner

    Opposite: Convert an one-liner to script: foo() { <one-liner> ; } ... typeset -f foo ... unset -f foo


    5
    (sed 's/#.*//g'|sed '/^ *$/d'|tr '\n' ';'|xargs echo) < script.sh
    knoppix5 · 2013-10-26 23:23:51 16
  • Shows cpu load in percent

    Show the current load of the CPU as a percentage. Read the load from /proc/loadavg and convert it using sed: Strip everything after the first whitespace: sed -e 's/ .*//' Delete the decimal point: sed -e 's/\.//' Remove leading zeroes: sed -e 's/^0*//' Show Sample Output


    5
    sed -e 's/ .*//' -e 's/\.//' -e 's/^0*//' /proc/loadavg
    flatcap · 2014-04-18 19:12:05 10
  • Get simple weather info from a zip code

    weather 97405 Show Sample Output


    5
    weather() { curl -s "http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:$1.1.99999" | grep "og:title" | cut -d\" -f4 | sed 's/&deg;/ degrees F/'; }
    cadejscroggins · 2015-09-19 07:57:47 12
  • Change every instance of OLD to NEW in file FILE

    Very quick way to change a word in a file. I use it all the time to change variable names in my PHP scripts (sed -i 's/$oldvar/$newvar/g' index.php)


    4
    sed -i 's/OLD/NEW/g' FILE
    nanexcool · 2009-02-05 18:07:41 26
  • Delete line number 10 from file

    Very useful when the ssh key of a host has changed and ssh refuses to connect to the machine, while giving you the line number that has changed in ~/.ssh/known_hosts.


    4
    sed -i '10d' <somefile>
    raphink · 2009-02-16 15:05:29 151
  • remove leading blank lines


    4
    sed '/./,$!d'
    grep · 2009-02-16 20:39:40 9
  • Convert Unix newlines to DOS newlines

    The ctrl+v,ctrl+m portion represents key presses that you should do. If you do it successfully you should see a ^M character appear.


    4
    sed 's/$/<ctrl+v><ctrl+m>/'
    SiegeX · 2009-02-16 20:53:05 12
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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"

Schedule Nice Background Commands That Won't Die on Logout - Alternative to nohup and at
Check out the usage of 'trap', you may not have seen this one much. This command provides a way to schedule commands at certain times by running them after sleep finishes sleeping. In the example 'sleep 2h' sleeps for 2 hours. What is cool about this command is that it uses the 'trap' builtin bash command to remove the SIGHUP trap that normally exits all processes started by the shell upon logout. The 'trap 1' command then restores the normal SIGHUP behaviour. It also uses the 'nice -n 19' command which causes the sleep process to be run with minimal CPU. Further, it runs all the commands within the 2nd parentheses in the background. This is sweet cuz you can fire off as many of these as you want. Very helpful for shell scripts.

Get last sleep time on a Mac
Similarly for last wake time: $ sysctl -a | grep waketime

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.

Repeat a command until stopped
In this case it runs the command 'curl localhost:3000/site/sha' waiting the amount of time in sleep, ie: 1 second between runs, appending each run to the console. This works well for any command where the output is less than your line width This is unlike watch, because watch always clears the display.

Clone starred github repos in parallel with unlimited speed, this example will clone 25 repositories in parallel at same time.

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

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