25 Terminal Tips Every Mac User Should Know

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25 Terminal Tips Every Mac User Should Know

Posted 12/11/2008 at 12:40:29pm | by Johnathon Williams

If you like Spotlight, you’ll love grep, an old-school pattern-matching utility. Like Spotlight, grep searches the full contents of files. Unlike Spotlight, however, grep specializes in locating patterns, which makes it ideal for analyzing text documents. Meanwhile, diff, fmt, and textutil offer other ways to quickly compare, format, and manage text files.

18. Find Patterns In Text Docs

One of our favorite uses of grep is checking finished documents for words and phrases we use too frequently. For instance, we tend to overuse compound sentences joined by “but.” The following command tells us how many lines in article.txt contain the offending word: grep -ic but article.txt.

n this example, the i option tells grep to ignore case (counting both uppercase and lowercase instances), and the c option tells it to return only the number of matches, not all of the lines in which the search term appears. For details, execute man grep.

19. Compare The Differences Between Two Text Files

screen shot of line code
Management--there’s another word we use way too often.

Here’s one for writers and office workers who deal with a lot of document revisions. The next time you need to quickly compare the differences between two text files, execute diff -y name-of-first-file name-of-second-file.

The -y option tells diff to split the output into two columns, one for each file, so the differences can be seen more easily.

20. Combine And Normalize Text Files

screen shot of finder
We could combine and convert all these documents by hand, or we could execute a single command in the Terminal.

If you’ve ever been involved in a large research project, you know how cutting and pasting from lots of different sources can produce a Frankenstein-like collection of documents, with different line lengths and inconsistent spacing. Next time, combine and clean those docs with this command: fmt -sp filneme1 filename2 filename 3 > name-of-new-file.txt.

The command will force line lengths of 65 characters, and normalize tabs and spacing.

21. Combine And Convert Documents of All Type

Not everyone wants or needs a copy of Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, we all sometimes need to work with Word documents. Textutil can convert between Word, rich-text, and plain-text formats--and it can combine multiple documents, change fonts, and adjust font size while doing it. To convert and combine all Word documents in the current directory to a single rich-text document called combined.rtf, execute textutil -cat rtf -output combined.rtf *.doc.

Sometimes, of course, you only need to convert a single file. Use this command to do so while changing the font to 12pt Helvetica textutil -cat rtf -font Helvetica -fontsize 10 -output converted-file.rtf file-to-convert.doc.

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COMMENTS: 21

TAGS: Mac OS X, Terminal, Utility

COMMENTS

Great article
Submitted by Jamie on Thu, 2008-12-11 19:01

And lest some users are thinking this is too uber-geeky for mere mortals such as themselves, it's worth mentioning that highlighted text from any text document can be dragged right into an open terminal window. If anyone were uncomfortable typing directly in Terminal, they could save a document of their favorite commands and just drag 'em over. Easy.

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A very timely article!
Submitted by cyberdog on Thu, 2008-12-11 22:46

What a very timely article (for me at least!). I was just looking into this... It is always a hassle setting up a new computer, it would be nice if I could just run a script that would configure some/most of my system for me. I've found some commands that looked promising but ran into a few road blocks... I went to my local Apple Store and there the Genius told me that they didn't do Unix! That sucks. Here what I have so far:I randefaults read com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions{ IconViewOptions = { ArrangeBy = none; BackgroundFlags = 0; BackgroundType = DefB; FontSize = 12; GridSpacing = 73; IconSize = 48; PropertiesLocation = botm; ShowPreviewIcon = 1; ViewMoreInfo = 0; };}I could reset the icon size or the font size or the grid spacing but not all three of them at once by using one of the following:defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict IconSize -integer 32;defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict FontSize -integer 11;defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict GridSpacing -integer 40;killall FinderI'd like to do something along the lines of:defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions { IconViewOptions = { FontSize = 11; GridSpacing = 40; IconSize = 32; };}But this does not work. Any ideas?

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A very timely article!!
Submitted by cyberdog on Fri, 2008-12-12 09:29

What a very timely article (for me at least!). I was just looking into this... It is always a hassle setting up a new computer, it would be nice if I could just run a script that would configure some/most of my system for me. I've found some commands that looked promising but ran into a few road blocks... I went to my local Apple Store and there the Genius told me that they didn't do Unix! That sucks. Here what I have so far:I randefaults read com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions{ IconViewOptions = { ArrangeBy = none; BackgroundFlags = 0; BackgroundType = DefB; FontSize = 12; GridSpacing = 73; IconSize = 48; PropertiesLocation = botm; ShowPreviewIcon = 1; ViewMoreInfo = 0; };}I could reset the icon size or the font size or the grid spacing but not all three of them at once by using one of the following:defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict IconSize -integer 32;defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict FontSize -integer 11;defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict GridSpacing -integer 40;killall FinderI'd like to do something along the lines of:defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions { IconViewOptions = { FontSize = 11; GridSpacing = 40; IconSize = 32; };}But this does not work. Any ideas?

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Format for comment suck...
Submitted by cyberdog on Fri, 2008-12-12 09:30

How do you turn off the reformatting?

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If you're using TextEdit...
Submitted by LeftClicker on Sun, 2009-03-22 19:11

then click Format > Make Plain Text or press Shift-Command-T. This will strip the document of all formatting (e.g. font, color, italicize, etc.).

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Vi(m) customization
Submitted by b_dubb on Sat, 2008-12-13 02:17

i'd love to see some 411 on customizing Vi(m) on the mac. for when i want to edit a file without opening a bloated text editor (dreamweaver).

b

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Some good info, but...
Submitted by apstewart on Tue, 2008-12-30 18:00

I'm relieved to see you corrected the "key" on the image in tip #3 as printed in this issue of the magazine, which was grossly incorrect. Now just change #15 to use Ctrl-C to stop ping, instead of Ctrl-Z (not Command-Z) which just suspends a command instead of stopping it. Yes, the picture says "Stopped", but it's still running. Type "fg" after hitting Ctrl-Z and you'll be taken right back to the ping. Same Ctrl-Z foolishness on #17.

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Very good tips to follow. I
Submitted by freyutss on Fri, 2009-01-16 11:02

Very good tips to follow. I am sure that a lot of people didn't know about these things when it comes to using Mac. I am grateful that you thought about us and put this information in this post for us.

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Ctrl-Z
Submitted by ndrw on Thu, 2009-02-26 12:01

Hi,Just a quick note about Ctrl-Z. When you use Ctrl-Z to stop a job or process that is running, it doesn't "kill" that process, just interrupts it and makes it wait. This is actually quite handy at times, because you have some job control you can do afterward:1) run the "jobs" command to see a list of jobs you've got waiting.2) run the "fg %#" command to bring a command back to active from the jobs list (use the number instead of the pound symbol).3) run the "bg %#" command to let a job run in the background (great for calculations and tasks that don't have much output!).4) run the "kill %#" command to kill the job.Be sure to put the percent symbol before the jobs list number, especially with the kill command, otherwise, it will use the process id (run "ps auxw" to see a list of all processes).Cheers,Andrew

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SSH How do you find IP addresses of networked Macs using termina
Submitted by mattone on Wed, 2009-03-11 10:49

I enjoy these types of articles. Keep them coming.

Re: SSH
So now that I'm ready to ssh into another Mac (or pc) on my home network, how do I discover their IP addresses without getting up out of my chair? I know that I can walk around the house and look in the Network Prefs to learn the IP address but I want to do it remotely. In my old Linksys router there was a panel in the web admin control screen showing the IP addresses of all the clients on my network. I don't see this in the Airport Utility for my new Time Capsule.

Is there a way to use the terminal to do this?

Matt

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Fining IP addresses
Submitted by Grimshaw on Thu, 2009-05-07 04:20

You can use a little app called Flame that will list all the IP addresses in your network.

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Question about Secure Erase of Free Space on my HD
Submitted by The Disciple on Thu, 2009-03-19 12:26

I executed this command "diskutil secureErase freespace 3 /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD" and it's running the erase but it seems to have doubled the contents of the HD, if only temporarily. Is this normal cause there's like Zero room left on my HD? Will it go away after the erase is complete? I just backed up w/ time machine on an external so I'm not super worried, but I'd just like to know what's going on.

Thanks
Nick

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Follow up?
Submitted by random99access on Tue, 2009-03-24 11:59

How did this work out for you? Space back to normal?

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A few more tips!
Submitted by brawns214 on Mon, 2009-03-23 21:04

This list is great, and it goes from beginning to much more advanced.

Try

sudo !!
This reexecutes the last command entered as root. Great for when you get pesky 'Permission Denied' errors

A mac exclusive! When you have a file in the finder that you want to do something with, you can just drag it into terminal and it will put the path (the file's location) to that file where your cursor is.

Having trouble deleting a large amount of stuff from trash or taking too long to do the 'preparing to delete' thing? Try:

sudo rm -rf /.Trashes/*
or
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Secondary-hard-drive/.Trashes/*

If you forget to put the .Trashes in the command, you could end up deleting a significant amount of important stuff.

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Good tips..
Submitted by lora.a on Fri, 2009-10-09 17:14

Guys always remember to quit an application before modifying its defaults.
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Those are some very good
Submitted by milkyglass on Thu, 2009-10-15 20:25

Those are some very good tips that everyone should pay attention to.
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Permission Errors?
Submitted by DSilda on Wed, 2009-10-28 17:25

I am the only one using my MacBook Pro. I would like to know where Permission errors come from.

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I am sure that a lot of
Submitted by lora.a on Wed, 2009-11-04 21:27

I am sure that a lot of people didn't know about these things when it comes to using Mac. I am grateful that you thought about us and put this information in this post for us.knee pain | pain relief

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