Which Linux command or utility is simple, powerful, and surprisingly unknown to many people or used less often?

This could be a command or a piece of software or an application.

For example I’m surprised to find that many people are unaware of Caddy, a very simple web server that can make setting up a reverse proxy incredibly easy.

Another example is fzf. Many people overlook this, a fast command-line fuzzy finder. It’s versatile for searching files, directories, or even shell history with minimal effort.

  • DigitalDilemma
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    254 days ago

    yes

    The most positive command you’ll ever use.

    Run it normally and it just spams ‘y’ from the keyboard. But when one of the commands above is piped to it, then it will respond with ‘y’. Not every command has a true -y to automate acceptance of prompts and that’s what this is for.

    • @friend_of_satan
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      104 days ago

      Also, you can make yes return anything:

      yes no
      
      • DigitalDilemma
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        63 days ago

        I… did not know that. Thanks, TIL!

    • @[email protected]
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      24 days ago

      That’s really neat but also seems like it could be quite dangerous in a lot of use-cases!

      • DigitalDilemma
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        23 days ago

        Absolutely, but when you do need it, it’s brilliant.

    • @alvendam
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      24 days ago

      What’s the syntax here? Do I go

      command && yes

      I’m not sure if I’ve had a use case for it, but it’s interesting.

      • @valkyre09
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        104 days ago

        Also my favourite way to push a core to 100% CPU

        yes > /dev/null
        
        • @[email protected]
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          3 days ago

          how is that better than

          cat /dev/zero > /dev/null

          or

          while true; do :; done

          • @valkyre09
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            33 days ago

            Who said it was better? It’s just my favourite.

            Like my favourite shirt, it’s no better than the others, but it brings me a little joy :)

            • on a serious note though, thank you for sharing your two examples - I didn’t know they existed.
      • @[email protected]
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        104 days ago

        That will just wait for command to finish properly and then run yes.

        What you want to run is yes | command, so it spams the command with confirmations.

      • @[email protected]
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        4 days ago

        true delivers error level 0, false error level 1.

        yes && echo True || echo False will always be True.

        false && echo True || echo False will always be False.

        Common usage is for tools that ask for permissions and similiar. yes | cp -i has the same effect as cp --force (-i: prompt before overwrites).

      • DigitalDilemma
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        3 days ago

        Sorry, I should have explained that. it’s command | yes yes|command - Eg, yes|apt-get update (Not a great example since apt-get has -y, but sometimes that fails when prompting for new keys to accept)

        Edit: I got it backwards, thanks @[email protected] for the correction.

        • @[email protected]
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          94 days ago

          You’ve got it backwards - you need to pipe the output of yes into the input of the command:

          yes | command-that-asks-a-lot-of-questions
          
          • DigitalDilemma
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            23 days ago

            So I did - thanks for the correction, edited.

      • @markstos
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        14 days ago

        For some cases I use “|| true”.

        The idiom accepts that the preceding command might fail, and that’s OK.

        For example, a script where mkdir creates a directory that might already exist.

          • @markstos
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            12 days ago

            Right, it was an example of a pattern. In that case, -p could be used.