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 15:05:29 158

  • 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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Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Redirect STDIN
Several times, I find myself hitting my up arrow, and changing the search term. Unfortunately, I find myself wasting too much time typing: $ grep kernel /var/log/messages Redirecting STDIN allows me to put the search term at the end so I less cursor movement to change what I'm searching for: $ < /var/log/messages grep kernel If you're using the emacs keyboard binding, then after you press your up arrow, press CTRL+w to erase the word. If this has already been submitted, I couldn't find it with the search utility.

Generate Random Passwords
If you want a password length longer than 6, changing the -c6 to read -c8 will give you 8 random characters instead of 6. To end up with a line-feed, use this with echo: # echo `< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c6` Modern systems need higher strenght, so add some special characters: # < /dev/urandom tr -dc '12345!@#$%qwertQWERTasdfgASDFGzxcvbZXCVB' | head -c8

Reset hosed terminal,
stty sane resets the tty to basic usable function. The ^J is a newline -- sometimes CR/LF interpretation is broken so use the ^J explicitly.

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" }

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" }

Short and sweet output from dig(1)
Turn off almost all of dig's output except for what you'd see in a zone file. This can also be put into ~/.digrc.

watch iptables counters
Watch the number of packets/bytes coming through the firewall. Useful in setting up new iptables rules or chains. Use this output to reorder rules for efficiency.

journalctl -f
a tail -f variant of systemd journal. Follow the most recent updates or if events are appended to the journal

Show an application's environment variables


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