Tip #311   Filter stderr for cron jobs

Tired to get your mailbox full of cron information messages?
Eg.: some programs (pg_dump, /etc/init.d/xxx, ...) output informational messages on stderr, but you can't close stderr because it may also contain failure informations.

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Tip #562   Version all unversioned files in an SVN checkout

Sometimes, you want to add a lot of files to SVN from the command line. This simple command will find all unversioned files in an SVN checkout and adds them to SVN versioning.

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Tip #403   list the most recent files in a directory

If you just want to find out what's new in a directory:

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Tip #388   Bash efficiency formula ;-)

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Tip #145   swap files

# Swap 2 files/dirs that are in the same dir
# Usage: sw f1 f2
function sw {
f1=$1
f2=$2
if [ "x$f2" = "x" ]; then
echo "Usage: sw file1 file2"
echo " swap name of 2 files"
else
d1=$(dirname $f1)
d2=$(dirname $f2)
if [ "$d1" != "." -o "$d2" != "." ]; then
echo "sw: Can swap only files in current directory"
else
if [ -e "$f1" -a -e "$f2" ]; then
mv $f1 .sw.$f1
mv $f2 $f1
mv .sw.$f1 $f2
else
echo "sw: '$f1' and '$f2' must exist"
fi
fi
fi
} Read more »

Tip #557   Randomize lines in a file

The bash shell has a variable called $RANDOM, which outputs a pseudo-random number every time you call it. This allows you to randomize the lines in a file for example:

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Tip #480   Diff Two Directories

A quick script to compare files from two directories (for example a backup and working directory).

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Tip #179   Disable bash history

Disable history for a particular account in bash with:

(in home dir)

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Tip #501   Check a bash script without executing

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Tip #261   Problem-free once-per-line loop

The for loop has a problem with entries with spaces, whether it's file names or entries in a text file. Common solutions include changing the IFS variable to exclude spaces (so that the for loop will only use tabs and line breaks to separate entries) and piping the entries to a 'while read line; do' command. However, setting and resetting IFS each time you want to include/exclude spaces is kinda messy and the 'while read' thing means you can't make any normal use of the read command within the loop. For a once-per-line loop that doesn't present these problems, try

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