It took me a moment to figure out what was going on there (with the whole clippy thing). The bulk of this list is the top commands from commandlinefu which has been on HN before [0], [1]. You can even go meta and install a command to let you search commandlinefu [2]. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527486 [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3843373 [2] http://samirahmed.github.com/fu/
Favorite Unix Commands
111–120 of 135 posts
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#112Please comment if you have a favorite not on this list.
tsort. It's pointless until you need it, but when you need it, it's totally awesome . less. Overkill, but SO MUCH BETTER THAN tail -f. Seriously. You can toggle "follow mode" without losing your place in the incoming stream.
tail --follow=filename
to: tail -f filename
The former will spot inode changes and reopen the filename if the file wraps (or has something else done to it to change its inode). The latter will just sit there seeing no new input in such cases.Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#113I forgot about the DNS querying of wikipedia. Probably could've used that to entertain myself on my flights over the holidays since I'm pretty sure gogo inflight passes DNS through. Anyway, I'm a big fan of piping things into xargs. xxd is a terminal-based hex editor. It can convert both to and from hex to binary. I also use 'pgrep -lf 'partial_program_name' a lot in place of 'ps aux | grep partial_program_name'. 'pk…
If they allow DNS out you can use their Internet for free via iodine: http://code.kryo.se/iodine/ I run an iodine server for myself, you can get free Internet at quite a few loginpage WiFi routers with it in airports, cafes etc.
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#114Ctrl+l is my most used command. I need a clean terminal
Same here; and love that it doesn't clear the command line you're currently typing. Does anyone know if there's a key command for clearing the scroll buffer?
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#115Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#116I have never understood the love for `sudo !!`. I think `ctrl+pa sudo ` is faster, explicit, and more versatile.
1. Ctrl+p. Go to the previous line in bash history.
2. Ctrl+a. Go to the beginning of the new line.
3. Type "sudo ". While you're typing your whole commandline shifts around as well.
The latter mixes history commands, navigation commands and also modifies a previous command instead of just typing a new 7-letter command. It's also more in terms of keystrokes (though just barely).
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#117Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#118ctrl-\, kills current process even xtail
xtail, tails dirs
tweaks in .inputrc to have up and down arrow do backward history search, like in ipython.
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#119I have never understood the love for `sudo !!`. I think `ctrl+pa sudo ` is faster, explicit, and more versatile.
I disagree. I think typing one more command "sudo !!" is much easier and straight-forward than doing 1. Ctrl+p. Go to the previous line in bash history. 2. Ctrl+a. Go to the beginning of the new line. 3. Type "sudo ". While you're typing your whole commandline shifts around as well. The latter mixes history commands, navigation commands and also modifies a previous command instead of just typing a new 7-letter comman…
Re: Favorite Unix Commands
#120I like those un- commands for easier archive extracting, e.g.: alias unbz2='tar xvjf' alias untar='tar xvfz'