Ben Chuanlong Du's Blog

And let it direct your passion with reason.

Compare Two Directories on Linux

On the Same Machine

If the two directories are on the same machine, you can use either colordiff (preferred over diff) or git diff to find the differences between them.

colordiff -qr dir_1 dir_2
git diff --no-index dir_1 dir_2

On Different Machines

It is a little bit tricky when the …

Advanced Use of "ls" in Linux

List Files Sorted by Time

You can list files sorted by time (newest first) using the -t option. Notice that the -t option is also support by hdfs dfs -ls.

ls -lht

Ignore Files

  1. You have to either enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wildcard in patterns.

  2. Equivalent …

Sample Lines from a File Using Command Line

NOTE: the article talks about sampling "lines" rather than "records". If a records can occupy multiple lines, e.g., if any field contains a new line (\n), the following tutorial does not work and you have to fall back to more powerful tools such as Python or R.

Let's say …

Account Management in Linux

** Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement! **

Create a User

Both adduser and useradd can be used to create a new user. adduser is interactive while useradd is non-interactive. It is suggested that you use useradd in batch …

Get Group Names on Linux/Unix

Linux

  1. Get information of the staff group.

    $ getent group staff
    staff:x:20:
    
  2. Get group ID of the staff group.

    $ getent group staff | cut -d: -f3
    20
    

Mac

  1. Get information of the staff group.

    $ dscl . -read /Groups/staff
    
  2. Get group ID of the staff group.

    $ dscl . -read /Groups/staff | awk …