Ask YC: What are the command line tools you can't live without?

3 points by jrsims ↗ HN
Obviously, tools like 'ls' will be in everyone's repertoire. Looking for some possibly obscure or under-utilized tools here.

13 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] thread
I love "open" on Mac OS X.
gnome-open for gnome users
Generic commands that use /etc/mailcap: see, edit, print, compose

socat is the swiss army knife that just about lets you forget everything's not a file:

$ socat readline: file:/dev/ttyS0,crnl,crtscts,echo=0 # interact with a serial port

$ socat readline: tcp:google.com:80 # interact with a tcp port

$ socat tcp-listen:1234,fork exec:cat # a forking cat service

= "start" on windows
Probably doesn't count, but I sure like that "sudo" command in Ubuntu.
du -h --max-depth=1 <dir>

apt-cache search --names-only <name>

less -S

free -m

time

host

xargs; say, a fast replacement for a find-exec: % find <whatever> -print0 | xargs -0 <command>
lynx, top, "curl -O <url>" on my mac since it doesn't come with wget (who's dumb idea was that?)
none.

Some of us have moved away from some of these arcane methods of interaction.

They call it progress you know...

:-)