useful-linux-terminal

#linux #reference #tech #cli

Shortcut Keys

• ctrl + R = reverse search through history
• ctrl + L = clear screen
• ctrl + U = clear line
• ctrl + W/K = clear before/after cursor
• ctrl + A/E = jump to begin/end of line
• esc + . = argument of the last command
• ctrl + X + E = open current line in text editor

Commands

Find and replace in a previous command

Replace a string in the last matching command:

^find^replace

ex:

ssh 192.168.0.7
# do stuff on that server, now move on to the next...
^.7^.8

Return to previous directory

cd -

Re-run previous command with sudo

sudo !!

Refer to last string of previous command

You can use $_ to refer to the last string/argument. ex:

touch /path/to/file
nano $_

Create directories from list

xargs mkdir -p < list.txt

Combine multiple files into one

find . -name '*.txt' -exec cat {} + >> ../combined.txt

List processes with ports open

sudo netstat -tulnp

Human readable CSV output

Input doesn’t need to be file, ie. sort instead of cat

cat data.csv | column -t -s -n, | less -S

BSD/MacOS column does not support -n argument, so:

cat data.csv | sed 's/,/ ,/g' | column -t -s, | less -S

Useful Utilities

ncdu

ncurses disk usage analyzer - scans all directories in the path and shows a list sorted by size