this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Which Linux tool or command is surprisingly simple, powerful, and yet underrated?" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] alvendam 2 points 3 days ago (5 children)

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 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

yes > /dev/null
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

how is that better than

cat /dev/zero > /dev/null

or

while true; do :; done

[–] valkyre09 3 points 1 day 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] 10 points 3 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] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 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).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

So I did - thanks for the correction, edited.

[–] markstos 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

mkdir -p will not complain if the dir exists

[–] markstos 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago

I figured as much. Just wanted to show another option.