Ask YC: What are the command line tools you can't live without?

by jrsims • 18 years ago

3 13 18 years ago

Obviously, tools like 'ls' will be in everyone's repertoire. Looking for some possibly obscure or under-utilized tools here.

mronge• 18 years ago

I love "open" on Mac OS X.

foonamefoo• 18 years ago

gnome-open for gnome users

tuukkah• 18 years ago

Generic commands that use /etc/mailcap: see, edit, print, compose

socat is the swiss army knife that just about lets you forget everything's not a file:

$ socat readline: file:/dev/ttyS0,crnl,crtscts,echo=0 # interact with a serial port

$ socat readline: tcp:google.com:80 # interact with a tcp port

$ socat tcp-listen:1234,fork exec:cat # a forking cat service

mwerty• 18 years ago

= "start" on windows

dkokelley• 18 years ago

Probably doesn't count, but I sure like that "sudo" command in Ubuntu.

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

Sudo make me a sandwich. (xkcd reference)

ivank• 18 years ago

du -h --max-depth=1 <dir>

apt-cache search --names-only <name>

less -S

free -m

time

host

tapostrophemo• 18 years ago

tree

makecheck• 18 years ago

xargs; say, a fast replacement for a find-exec: % find <whatever> -print0 | xargs -0 <command>

whalesalad• 18 years ago

lynx, top, "curl -O <url>" on my mac since it doesn't come with wget (who's dumb idea was that?)

jrsims• 18 years ago

Install macports and you can add wget, as well as elinks and many others.

mixmax• 18 years ago

none.

Some of us have moved away from some of these arcane methods of interaction.

They call it progress you know...

:-)

billroberts• 18 years ago

mysql>

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