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

dkokelley · on March 13, 2008

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

kajecounterhack · on March 13, 2008

Sudo make me a sandwich. (xkcd reference)

mronge · on March 13, 2008

I love "open" on Mac OS X.

foonamefoo · on March 13, 2008

gnome-open for gnome users

tuukkah · on March 13, 2008

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 · on March 14, 2008

= "start" on windows

makecheck · on March 13, 2008

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

whalesalad · on March 13, 2008

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

jrsims · on March 13, 2008

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

ivank · on March 13, 2008

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

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

less -S

free -m

time

host

tapostrophemo · on March 13, 2008

mixmax · on March 13, 2008

none.

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

They call it progress you know...

:-)

billroberts · on March 13, 2008

mysql>