Commands using sed (1,319)

  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

  • 5
    sed -r "s:\x1B\[[0-9;]*[mK]::g"'
    roylez · 2010-07-22 05:37:25 6
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • - 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • (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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • weather 97405 Show Sample Output


    5
    weather() { curl -s "http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:$1.1.99999" | grep "og:title" | cut -d\" -f4 | sed 's/&deg;/ degrees F/'; }
    cadejscroggins · 2015-09-19 07:57:47 12
  • Very quick way to change a word in a file. I use it all the time to change variable names in my PHP scripts (sed -i 's/$oldvar/$newvar/g' index.php)


    4
    sed -i 's/OLD/NEW/g' FILE
    nanexcool · 2009-02-05 18:07:41 26
  • 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 15:05:29 160

  • 4
    sed '/./,$!d'
    grep · 2009-02-16 20:39:40 9
  • 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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run last command with root
you will be sad after you run a command and find out it needs root, so you should run it again but with prefix sudo. so this line is to make it simple. just 'sudo !!'

check open ports without netstat or lsof

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" }

get bofh excuse from a trusted source :-)

Take a screenshot of the window the user clicks on and name the file the same as the window title
In general, this is actually not better than the "scrot -d4" command I'm listing it as an alternative to, so please don't vote it down for that. I'm adding this command because xwd (X window dumper) comes with X11, so it is already installed on your machine, whereas scrot probably is not. I've found xwd handy on boxen that I don't want to (or am not allowed to) install packages on. NOTE: The dd junk for renaming the file is completely optional. I just did that for fun and because it's interesting that xwd embeds the window title in its metadata. I probably should have just parsed the output from file(1) instead of cutting it out with dd(1), but this was more fun and less error prone. NOTE2: Many programs don't know what to do with an xwd format image file. You can convert it to something normal using NetPBM's xwdtopnm(1) or ImageMagick's convert(1). For example, this would work: "xwd | convert fd:0 foo.jpg". Of course, if you have ImageMagick already installed, you'd probably use import(1) instead of xwd. NOTE3: Xwd files can be viewed using the X Window UnDumper: "xwud <foo.xwd". ImageMagick and The GIMP can also read .xwd files. Strangely, eog(1) cannot. NOTE4: The sleep is not strictly necessary, I put it in there so that one has time to raise the window above any others before clicking on it.

List only directories, one per line
omit the 1 (one) if you don't need one-per-line

Backup with SSH in a archive
$PRIVATEKEY - Of course the full path to the private key \n $HOST - The host where to get the backup \n $SOURCE - The directory you wish to backup \n $DESTINATION - The destination for the backup on your local machine

count how many cat processes are running
'ps ax' provides the fill list of running processes. 'grep -c [c]at' will find all processes that match 'cat' without matching itself....

Rename files in batch

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


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