Top (three at most) most useful command line tools/utilities

twain

Requirements: command line (any OS), must be extremely useful, very cool, and does not have to be a utility (eg, can be a CD ripper or CD burner whatever). Please also include an example favorite usage of the tool that illustrates it's usefulness.

I'm just going to include my favorite command line utility, but feel free to include your top (up to) three if you wish! Looking forward to finding some cool new tools from this thread!

lftp: What can't you do with this ftp client? It can do ftp, ftps, http, https, hftp, fish, sftp and file. It even supports torrent protocol. It supports a subset of standard unix commands as well.

Favorite usage: quickly mirror a remote directory to current local directory:

lftp -e "mirror -v /path/to/folder" sftp://user@host

gubbyte

ompload: upload a file to ompldr.org; copy link to clipboard (requires ruby + curl)

sudo wget -O /usr/bin/ompload http://ompldr.org/ompload
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/ompload

useful for pretty much anything that you need to upload, eg.:

notroot@circle:~$ echo 'hello' > hi
notroot@circle:~$ ompload hi
Progress for 'hi'
################################################################ 100.0%
Omploaded 'hi' to http://ompldr.org/vMmdteg
Success.

Nickk

rsync would have to be my favourite.

A very robust yet simple way to transfer files. I've setup a cron that backs up all the data on my VPSs to a central location, good peace of mind..

rsync -avz -e ssh user@host:/remote/dir /this/dir/

bobby

rm

wdq

wget, nano, mv, cp, I use all on a daily basis.

Ishaq

wget, rm-rf, nano

Corey

lol nano

twain

How about some less common ones

fly

wc

joepie91

git, tig.

solarvm

sh

birdie25

screen

eastonch

cd, dir, nano?

arieonline

terminator, the split to three window to run : bmon, htop, nethogs

so i can monitor cpu, ram, and network, in one place

Steve81

bash
ps_mem.py
mvcase

black

grep
sed
curl

eva2000

nano
grep
ls

raindog308

gcc, make, and vi. With those I can make the rest.

CNJeremy

htop
iftop
nano

NickM

Everyone should know how to use netcat (nc) and telnet.

budingyun

Htop, df, vi.

twain

What's interesting for me is that I'm so used to Vim, that nano/pico is actually "too hard to use" for me

gubbyte

@Zen said: and NANO?!?!??!?!!?!? REAAAAALLY?!

ohmygodeveryoneispostingnanowhatiswrongwiththeworld

All the cool kids use nano.

@raindog308 said: vi
@budingyun said: vi

Not even vim?

FluX

@gubbyte said: Not even vim?

vi for me points to vim plus its 1 char shorter

So... vi, htop, awk and grep and of course sudo rm -rf /

du -ksBM * | sort -g I use an alias of this so much its not even funny.

NickM

Big surprise here... the topic has turned into an editor war.

bamn

nano? pico is like 10x better

NickM

Real men use ed.

DotMG

exit

DotMG

Each time I open a terminal to run something, I don't know but I always close the terminal with following :
free; uptime; ps faux; exit

CNJeremy

I have always used nano for some reason so it is what I use. And realistically for what I use it for it really is all I need.

raindog308

@gubbyte said: Not even vim?

I hate vim, though admittedly I use it a lot. I just want to use vi - I don't want it in multiple colors, I don't want the editor inserting comment starters automatically, I don't want syntax highlighting, etc. In Linux my .vimrc is mostly commands to turn annoying vimprovements off.