My Favorite One Liners (muhammadraza.me)

That one gave me a giggle too - perhaps the author got told off for useless uses of cat too many times?

    < input_file.txt grep some_pattern | grep another 

    grep some_pattern < input_file.txt | grep another

    cat file       |\
        program1   |\
        program2   |\
        ...

    alias null='>/dev/null 2>/dev/null'

    null evince file.pdf

    cat file       |
        program1   |
        program2   |
        ...

    echo foo | # echoing foo
        tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'
    FOO

`grep . *` has different output than `cat` if `*` expands to more than one filename: every line is prefixed by the filename it exists in.

The use of grep the author proposes will have each line of output prefixed with the name of the file it came from followed by a colon. That is if the glob expands to more than one file though, if it only expands to a single file then it is equivalent to cat. Use of the -h option should be passed to grep if the difference in format is something the author wishes to guarantee.

    grep ^ *

xclip and xsel for X11: xclip -o | jq

If you’re on Windows, Set-Clipboard in PowerShell does this too and is super handy.

jq is lovely. python3 has a json formatter built in as well

pbpaste | python3 -m json.tool

clip.exe when on WSL (alias to pbcopy, if Mac way is the way).

Totally got the same confusion.

I hope whoever follows this blindly doesn’t lose too many files they wanted to cat.

I added `margin-top: 3em` to `ul, ol, dl` and it is much more readable.

there is a couple jokes in there

The first joke oneliner I learned, circa 1980:

1: gotta light?

No match.

Quickly followed by:

2: Could you beat up superman?

No match.

Oh, the days when csh was cool and not retro.

    $ %blow
    No such job

You are my new favorite person today.

Yep, definitely among my top git aliases.

Google/DDG search for "git lg2" should also reliably take you to this SO answer to copy the alias from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9074343

Usage:

  git branches

Code for your ~/.gitconfig

  branches = branch -a --sort=-committerdate --format='\
  %(HEAD) \
  %(if)%(HEAD)%(then)\ 
  %(color:"#329664")%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) \
  %(color:"#222222")[%(committerdate:short)]%(color:reset) \
  %(color:green)%(refname:short)%(color:reset) \
  %(else)\
  %(if)%(upstream)%(then)\
  %(color:"#999999")%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) \
  %(color:"#222222")[%(committerdate:short)]%(color:reset) \
  %(refname:short) \
  %(color:"#ffc662")%(upstream:track)%(color:reset) \
  %(else)\
  %(color:"#963232")%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) \
  %(color:"#222222")[%(committerdate:short)]%(color:reset) \
  %(color:red)%(refname:lstrip=1)%(color:reset)\
  %(color:"#ffc662")%(upstream:track)%(color:reset) \
  %(end)\
  %(end)\
  '

Meaning

  HASH Commit_date Branch_Name

  A white branch_name means it is local.
  Red means it is remote.
  Yellow branch_name is the current branch.
  It will also tell you if your checked out branch is ahead or behind the remote branch.

  $ cargo build --release
  error: failed to get `bitflags` as a dependency of package `alacritty v0.9.0-dev (/home/myuser/sources/alacritty/alacritty)`
  
  Caused by:
    failed to initialize index git repository
  
  Caused by:
    failed to parse config file: invalid configuration key (in /home/myuser/.config/git/config:57); class=Config (7)

svn? Blast from the past! Why are you using it?

Even funner quirk with stuff like that:

    $ bash -c 'shopt -s extglob; rm -- !(x)'
    bash: -c: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `('
    bash: -c: line 1: `shopt -s extglob; rm -- !(x)'

Because of the strangeness of the bash parser, the glob has to come on the preceding line:

    $  bash -c $'shopt -s extglob\nrm -- !(x)'

It would be great to have an aliases library with sections - where one may be able to copy a section for a given ch'unk of task types..

You might like this: https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse

For those that don't know "start ." is the Windows version of "open .", opening Explorer in the current folder.

Speaking of Windows, "pushd \\servername\sharename" is a simple way to mount a share in Windows, if you have the login creds cached, and set the new drive letter as your active drive. Useful if you need to bounce around a bunch of shares.

> I also have an alias for "osascript -e 'display notification "'"$1"'"'", which will display the text you choose in a MacOS notification

This one is great. Very, very useful.

  $ rin +30 Check the turkey
  $ rin '14:30 tomorrow' Watch baseball

> My favourite one-liner is "open .", to open the current directory in Finder.

For linux one can use `xdg-open .` to use the associated application. Works with pdf, image files, videos, etc.

I have the alias x=xdg-open in my .bashrc, so that I use `x somefile` to open files.

A slightly upgraded bash/zsh function for displaying a notification:

  noti() {
    osascript -e \
      'on run argv
        display notification (item 1 of argv) with title "Notification"
       end run' \
      $1
  }

  # Example:
  noti 'Hello world!'

This fixes any escaping issues by passing the notification string to osascript as an argument instead of embedding it in the text of the program (which makes things like quotation marks not work correctly).

Sticking it in your .bashrc or .zshrc will make it available at any time in your shell.

If you use WSL, you can get the same functionality as "open ." with

  explorer.exe $(wslpath -w "$PWD")

It's a bit lengthy so this is always aliased in my .bashrc when using WSL

   alias open="/mnt/c/Windows/explorer.exe"

Not a one-liner by itself, but sticking pbcopy/pbpaste into a pipeline is great for quick text processing. Wish you had regency support in a text field? `pbpaste | sed s/needle/NEEDLE/g | pbcopy`

I often like alert better (osascript -e 'display alert "'"$1"'"'"), this way the message don't go away before you click ok.

Can also combine with a vocal message: sleep 2; osascript -e 'say "Hello World!"'; osascript -e 'display alert "hello world"'

The last one copied from https://code-maven.com/display-notification-from-the-mac-com...

Most Linux based OSes will probably have busybox installed which includes its own web server. This can be nice if you don't have python (or if you think its overkill.)

The linux (ubuntu?) version of `open .` is `xdg-open .`

Of all the things awk can do, I will never understand the popularity of echoing an argument.

The same thing in bash would be:

  $ arg1 () { echo $1; }
  $ arg1 one two three
  one

Splitting fields is easy with cut:

  $ echo one two three | cut -f 1 -d " "
  one

Normally you just want to stuff it into a variable in which case read is much easier:

  $ read arg1 arg2 arg3 < <(echo one two three)
  $ echo arg1
  one

Symbolic names are normally much easier to read than numeric positions.

That last example looks a bit weird with <() instead of a pipe, but that's just because the right hand side of a pipe is a separate shell so setting variables in it is a bit useless. It's nothing specific to read.

Another application of this is counting unique IPs in Apache access logs.

  zgrep -Po '^[0-9.]+' /var/log/apache2/test.access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

I saw this mentioned a few weeks ago:

https://stedolan.github.io/jq

“Like sed for JSON data”

Nushell comprehensively addresses this: https://www.nushell.sh

(I don't have an opinion yet. Been meaning to try it for a year now but a shell is a difficult thing to switch)

Not a linux command, but PowerShell (on linux) have a ConvertTo-Json cmdlet, it can parse dotnet object, so 'Get-ChildItem | ConvertTo-Json' will give you the output you want, but it is less successful with text so 'ls -alh | ConvertTo-Json' will give you an array and not distinct objects.

For this to work on the command line, the json-pipe command would need some heuristic for parsing arbitrary input, could be tricky.

Interestingly enough, the Arista CLI actually implements something like this, but it's not a real pipe or a separate command - each command implements it's own `<command> | json` handler.

I use cut instead of awk, at least for logs like apache or ones with fixed amount of spaces between fields, because it means less parsing/work, specially for summarizing long log files. Also use cat of the log as input, because is the same pattern for zcat/grep/zgrep if the input is compressed or I did some selection of records before.

Some of the records you may have to search could have the port attached (i.e. output of netstat, haproxy logs or others) so for stripping them I add

rev | cut -d ":" -f 2- | rev

on the list of IPs to not get messed up with IPv6 records.

It's better for places where you can't control text wrapping or text is limited. Twitter is the main one.

Passive aggressiveness.

> There is nothing more annoying than a picture of a block of text

Oh, but there is: Videos of bug reports where a person first has to explain that they have found a bug, and they will try to reproduce it now, and if you're still watching after 3 minutes you might see the important 5 seconds of the video, that could have been expressed in a few well-written sentences!

I do this all the time for validation effort etc. where they need an artifact.

My personal theory is that fewer and fewer people spend time on actual general computing devices. When confined to straitjackets like phones and tablets, people resort to the one functionality that is easy to reach for, namely screenshots. I'm guessing the habit spreads?

Just look at the amount of garbage "here's my code as a screenshot, what's wrong?" questions Stack Overflow has to remove each and every single day.

I dunno, but google photos does an amazing job of taking a picture and then just allowing you to select text right out of it. Even text with a weird font (possible handwriting?). Kinda blows my mind.

Maybe just me. I tried the command:

  ps aux | convert label:@- process.png

And got an image that was useless. Nothing readable.

It's faster to do "screenshot area to paste buffer" then paste it than to select the text you want (text selection requires more precision than just snagging a zone of the screen) and fiddle with text formatting on the receiving program (Slack, email, whatever). I do it all the time when I just want to show someone something short, and don't expect them to need to copy it. Bonus: precisely the same workflow works for non-text.

It’s convenient to share in a Slack (and similar) channel. At least I do it all the time. Also, convenient to attach in an RCA doc that’s shared with higher ups who don’t have time to play around with metrics dashboard.

> There is nothing more annoying than a picture of a block of text that I can't copy, quote, or modify and send back to someone.

Don't forget search.

Too many StackOverflow posts start with a screenshot of yum errors or mysql logs.

Ugh.

Someone should write a browser plugin that OCRs the text in an image and makes it selectable.

It's pretty handy for gifs where you actually see the problem getting reproduced. But for the rest I agree it is getting rather annoying. And I honestly don't know why tech-savvy people who work on software themselves would do it. It is slower and less convenient.

For others it's pretty clear though: taking a smartphone picture and emailing it around is probably always faster than other means. Plus I'm pretty sure less tech-savy people simply have no idea Ctrl-C works nearly everywhere, including shells and dialog boxes.

You cannot tweet a piece of formatted text. You can sort quote it in Facebook, but any formatting like color will be lost, and color is often important in terminal output.

So, sadly, the picture is made exactly with the purpose of proper quoting, unfortunately losing the textual content :(

It definitely has some utility especially design/layout problems but if you need to type the same thing to reproduce it, it's a pain.

We're required to provide screen shot images for system audits. Since somehow those are harder to manipulate (much laughter).

And... that command doesn't work for me when I'm using ssh to access my servers or using x2go.

Here is how I like to share logs/outputs these days:

  ps aux | nc termbin.com 9999

100% agree but I think the motivation is not to purposefully be inaccessible but rather to get aesthetically pleasing stylings like code highlighting, font choice, editor theme, etc. People will always choose the pretty solution over the accessible one, unless forced to do otherwise. So, we need to make it easier (easier than screenshotting actually) to share code over text and yet keep all those sick styles you want. Just look at Medium for what NOT to do. Never have I seen a more hostile forum for code sharing. Look at GitHub for a decent example. There really isn’t a good example I’m aware of. Even highlight.js I have trouble getting my code to “scroll overflow” rather than wrap (which for code can be more problematic than it is for regular writing).

friction

sharing a snapshot is guaranteed to be easy to do in two clicks

sharing text is less so, selection is more work, finding a host is more work

What is import? Does it read text from image?

nice! I extended it to a little shell script so it gets written to a file, too.

I get decent output by using headless chrome to dump to a pdf, then pdftotext (from poppler-utils) to format that as text.

  google-chrome --headless --disable-gpu --print-to-pdf=out.pdf https://www.cnn.com
  pdftotext -layout -nopgbrk out.pdf - | less

Fixed link: https://gist.github.com/defulmere/bec1aef40ca4cddb5c421ffa5f...

Dangit, there should have been an ASCII block character in that second printf. Here's a version with an asterisk instead:

  atopsar -p | grep ":[0-9]\{2\}\s\+[0-9]" | awk '{printf("\n%s %6.2f ",$1, $5); for (i = 0; i<$5; i++) {printf("*")}}'; echo

My version of `pw', might be useful to those without `pwgen':

  function genpasswd() { 
    openssl rand 150 | LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc '[[:alnum:]!@#$%^&]' | tr -d iIlLOo0 | cut -c 1-${1:-12}; 
   }