Miscellaneous cli tools

ncdu

by

Updated: 28 May 2026

NCurses Disk Usage

Install ncdu

sudo apt install ncdu

Count files and dirs from /, without crossing filesystem boundaries

ncdu -x /

Display results without color

ncdu --color off /home/chris

pandoc

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Updated: 07 October 2026

Convert a markdown file to a pdf

pandoc input.md -o output.pdf

Convert a markdown file to a pdf, with Docker

docker run --rm --volume "`pwd`:/data" --user `id -u`:`id -g` pandoc/latex README.md -o README.pdf

Convert a .docx file to ePUB format, adding a table of contents 

pandoc input.docx -o output.epub --toc

rclone

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Updated: 31 January 2026

Lists all the available remotes from the config file

rclone listremotes

Lists directories in the remote aws_s3

rclone lsd aws_s3:

List the supported providers

rclone config providers

For my_remote, show the contents of migration/videos in tree format

rclone tree my_remote:migration/videos

patch

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Updated: 24 October 2025

Apply a diff file to an original. Examples from here

Update file1.txt to make it identical to file2.txt

echo 'Hello, World!' > file1.txt
echo 'Hello, Linux!' > file2.txt
diff -u file1.txt file2.txt > file.diff
patch file1.txt < file.diff

tee

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Updated: 04 October 2025

Read from standard input and write to standard output and files.

Find, from the root, all directories with ‘vim’ in their name. Send all non-error output simultaneously to std-out and a file

find / -type d -iname '*vim*' 2> /dev/null | tee find-results.txt

wget

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Updated: 14 August 2026

Create an off-line, static copy of a site
--recursive Turn on recursive retrieving, default depth 5.
--page-requisites Download all files necessary to properly display a given HTML page.
--convert-links Make links in downloaded document suitable for local viewing.

wget --recursive --page-requisites --html-extension --convert-links https://example.com

Download a file

wget https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js

Download a file and rename

wget -O /put/here/new_name.js https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js

xargs

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Updated: 29 August 2026

xargs takes it’s own stdin and converts this into arguments for commands that cannot read stdin.

Display the contents of all files called conn.cfg.php

find . -name 'conn\.cfg\.php' | xargs cat