Tagged Questions
15
votes
1answer
344 views
Is there a standard command that always exits with a failure?
I want to test my script with a command that fails. I could use an existing command with bad arguments. I could also write a simple script that immediately exits with a failure. Both of these are easy ...
14
votes
5answers
7k views
Split pages in pdf
I have a scanned pdf file which has scanned two pages on one virtual page (page in pdf file).
The resolution is with good quality. The problem is I have to zoom when reading and drag from left to the ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
find n most frequent words in a file
I want to find, say, 10 most common word in a text file. Firstly, solution should be optimized for keystrokes (in other words - my time). Secondly, for the performance. Here is what I have so far to ...
7
votes
2answers
329 views
Shell Script for going through a dir recursively and chmodding based on conditions of file type
Can anyone point me to either code or a tutorial for writing a shell script that can recursively go through an entire directory structure (starting at the current working directory, or given an ...
7
votes
4answers
551 views
What is the easiest way to execute text from tail at the command line?
Sometimes I'm working on a new (ubuntu) box and I type git and am alerted:
The program 'git' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
apt-get install git-core
If that happens I ...
6
votes
2answers
725 views
XFCE or pure X11 commands, toggle compositing immediately without restarting X
How can i disable compositing via the command line? I need to disable temporarily for some games, like Nexuiz, for use in a wrapper script to toggle compositing status.
5
votes
3answers
2k views
Storing output of command in shell variable
I have an operation using cut that I would like to assign result to a variable
var4=ztemp.xml |cut -f1 -d '.'
I get the error:
ztemp.xml is not a command
The value of var4 never gets ...
5
votes
2answers
542 views
How to tweet using terminal?
I would like to tweet a message using terminal.
I tried something like:
curl -u 'TwitterUsername':'TwitterPassword' -d status=”Your Message Here” https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
but seems ...
4
votes
4answers
416 views
How can I pass a command line argument into a shell script?
I know that shell scripts just run commands as if they were executed in at the command prompt. I'd like to be able to run shell scripts as if they were functions... That is, taking an input value or ...
4
votes
2answers
289 views
How to list files and directories with directories first
I have two questions. First, which command lists files and directories, but lists directories first?
Second question: I want to copy a list of files into a single directory, but make the target ...
4
votes
1answer
416 views
How to create a confirmation question in Linux?
I have a certain command (git push server-name) that has major consequences. How to require confirmation for this command only? It should ignore white space.
The confirmation could be Enter 'yes i am ...
3
votes
2answers
684 views
Passing a bash command-line argument containing a dot
How can a command-line argument containing a dot (.) be passed? Are there any escape sequences for capturing characters like dot?
The following invocation of a bash-script from the shell does not ...
3
votes
2answers
213 views
Move with possible rename
Is it possible to construct a command that will move the file to another directory and if the same file is already there, generate some random string that is not in the name of some file in the ...
3
votes
2answers
89 views
Make copies of a single directory to multiple directories with different names
I'm trying to replicate a single directory (with sub-directories) to a bunch of new directories based on a list. For example I can:
mkdir Fred Barney Thelma Louise Foo Bar
How would I copy a premade ...
3
votes
1answer
163 views
Extract directory from wget's stdout
I am trying to wget a tarball from github.com and, without creating a temporary file, extract a subdirectory from it:
wget -qO- https://github.com/django-nonrel/django-nonrel/tarball/develop | tar ...
