9 Powerful Bash Tricks to Boost Your Command‑Line Productivity

I enjoy exploring the Bash environment and often encounter repetitive problems that require the same solutions; to avoid rewriting these solutions each time, I created a set of reusable functions and added them to my .bashrc file.

Tip 1 – Insert a line at the top of a file

Use sed to prepend a line:

sed -i '1s/^/line to insert
/' path/to/file/you/want/to/change.txt

Tip 2 – Append multiple lines to a configuration file

Employ a here‑document (EOF) to insert a block of text:

cat >> path/to/file/to/append-to.txt << "EOF"
export PATH=$HOME/jdk1.8.0_31/bin:$PATHexport JAVA_HOME=$HOME/jdk1.8.0_31/
EOF

Tip 3 – Recursive search and replace across a directory

Combine find with sed (OS X syntax shown):

# OSX version
find . -type f -name '*.txt' -exec sed -i '' s/this/that/g {} +

A reusable Bash function can simplify this:

function sr {
    find . -type f -exec sed -i '' s/$1/$2/g {} +
}

Usage example:

sr wrong_word correct_word

Tip 4 – Open a temporary file in Vim/Dropbox

Create temporary files with random names using openssl:

function sc {
    gvim ~/Dropbox/$(openssl rand -base64 10 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z').txt
}
function scratch {
    gvim ~/Dropbox/$(openssl rand -base64 10 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z').txt
}

Running sc or scratch opens a new Vim window with a random‑named file.

Tip 5 – Download files with curl handling redirects and SSL issues

Fetch a page and follow redirects, ignoring SSL errors: curl -Lks <some-url> Download a file (e.g., a tarball) similarly:

curl -OLks <some-url/to/a/file.tar.gz>

Tip 6 – Bashmarks for quick directory navigation

Use bashmarks to bookmark frequently visited directories and jump back to them with a simple command.

Tip 7 – Extract a specific column from formatted output (awk)

Example extracting the second column from git status -s output:

# Sample output of git status -s command:
M .bashrc
?? .vim/bundle/extempore/

# Remove status code and keep file names
git status -s | awk '{print $2}'

A reusable function:

function col {
    awk -v col=$1 '{print $col}'
}

Usage:

git status -s | col 2

Tip 8 – Skip the first X words using xargs

Define a helper to drop the first N fields:

function skip {
    n=$(( $1 + 1 ))
    cut -d' ' -f${n}-
}

Example processing docker images output to obtain only image IDs:

docker images | col 3 | xargs | skip 1

Tip 9 – Build your own command package

You can create custom Bash commands; for instance, a shortcut to copy an SSH key to any server: dur key user@somehost Finally, try adding these functions to your own .bashrc or create a new one, and feel free to share additional tips in the comments.