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

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

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

Sudo make me a sandwich. (xkcd reference)

I love "open" on Mac OS X.

gnome-open for gnome users

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

= "start" on windows

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

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

less -S

free -m

time

host

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

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

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

none.

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

They call it progress you know...

:-)

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