cli text

unix text tips that don’t have their own page

extract urls

egrep -o 'https?://[^ ]+' file

column

format in neat columns

column -t -s" "

before:

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit
amet consectetur
adipiscing elit

after:

Lorem       ipsum
dolor       sit
amet        consectetur
adipiscing  elit

line numbers

nl

before:

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit
amet consectetur
adipiscing elit

after:

1 Lorem ipsum
2 dolor sit
3 amet consectetur
4 adipiscing elit

split into smaller files

split -l2 file

Defaults to 1000 lines and files xaa, xab, xac…

before:

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit
amet consectetur
adipiscing elit

after:

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit
amet consectetur
adipiscing elit

See also