Top 10 tricks for the terminal

1. Execute the last command with !!

The title says it all, just enter the following in a terminal ...

!!

… To re-execute the last command entered. This trick is very useful when we forget to enter sudo at the beginning. In that case, you would have to enter:

sweat !!

To discover more complex ways to get the most out of this trick, I recommend reading this old post.

2. Execute the last command but correcting a typing error

This trick is really useful when we enter a command with a simple typo. For example, if we run:

threw out "desdelinuxz"

You can correct it by entering the following:

^z

3. Invoke a text editor to enter a long command

Sometimes you need to enter endless commands in the terminal. In that case, the help of a simple text editor, such as nano or emacs, can be helpful.

To open the editor, just press Ctrl + x + e in a terminal. The text that you have entered so far will be copied into the text editor once it is opened.

For its part, the editor used will be the one specified in the $ EDITOR variable. To change this configuration, it is possible to execute ...

export EDITOR = nano

… Replacing nano with your preferred editor.

4. Execute a command without saving it to history

A true hacker cannot ignore this trick. As everyone knows, bash saves the history of executed commands, which is very easy to access using the keyboard arrows or Ctrl + R (to perform a reverse search in the history).

In this case, what you have to do so that the entered command is not saved in the history is to put a space in front:

command

5. Automatically place the last parameter of a command

Suppose the command executed earlier was

cp file.txt / var / www / wp-content / uploads / 2009/03 /

To access the directory in question, you can enter the command cd followed by Alt +. o Esc +. :

cd 'ALT +.'

This is just a shortened way to enter:

cd / var / www / wp-content / uploads / 2009/03 /

6. Execute a command at a specified time

Yes, yes, that's what it exists for cron. However, sometimes we want to run a command to run at a certain time but only once.

Suppose we want to execute the command Ls -l at midnight. In that case, we must execute it in the following way:

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

7. Get your external IP

Thanks to the service provided by http://ifconfig.me/ It is possible to know various data of your Internet connection, directly from the terminal:

curl ifconfig.me/ip // IP address curl ifconfig.me/host // Remote Server curl ifconfig.me/ua // User Agent curl ifconfig.me/port // Port

8. Learn how to use Ctrl + u and Ctrl + y

How many times did it happen to you that you started typing a command and remembered that before it was necessary to do something else? Well, it is possible to do a sort of cut-paste so that later it is easier to re-enter the command that was left half.

Suppose you started writing ...

cd / home / user

and you remembered that before you had to check something in the current directory. In that case press Ctrl + u (It would be something like a "cut").

Enter the command that needed to be run first. Suppose ...

Ls -l

... and then press Ctrl + y (It works like a "paste").

9. Clean the terminal easily

With Ctrl + l the terminal can be cleaned in a jiffy.

10. Go to a directory, run a command, and return to the current directory

This trick is a delight. To execute a series of commands without leaving the current directory, just group them in parentheses. As almost everyone knows, to execute a series of commands, you have to concatenate them using &&. Using these concepts, we can execute something like the following:

(cd / tmp && ls)

The result of this command (notice the parentheses) will be a list of the files and directories within the folder / Tmp. All without leaving our current directory. A jewel!

Yapa. List the most used commands

To see them most used commands just execute the following:

history | awk '{a [$ 2] ++} END {for (i in a) {print a [i] "" i}}' | sort -rn | head

In my case, the winners were:

450 yaourt 415 sudo 132 git 99 cd 70 leafpad 70 killall 68 ls 52 pacman 50 xrandr 45 top

For terminal fans, like this server, I recommend visiting commandlinefu. Also, why not, don't stop looking at the archive from our blog.