Bash Utils (miscellaneous small utils for the Bash shell)

New (Jan 9, 2017)! All scripts were updated to Python 3. The original Python 2 version (which is not maintained anymore) is tagged as “v0.1”. You can find that
under the “release” link.

Here I collect some small command-line utils.

• Author: Laszlo Szathmary, 2011-2017 ([email protected])
• Github: https://github.com/jabbalaci/Bash-Utils

dictionary/meaning.py

• Look up the meaning of a word.
• Usage: meaning pen
• Meaning: what does the word pen mean?

dropbox/dropbox_permissions.py

• Set directory/file permissions in your Dropbox folder in an intelligent way.
• Intended audience: Linux users who also use Windows sometimes.
• Usage: put the script in the root of your Dropbox folder and launch it.
• blog post

dropbox/get_public_link.py

• Show the public Dropbox link(s) of one (or several) file(s).
• Dropbox made some changes in 2017, so it doesn’t work anymore.
• Usage: get_public_link [<file> | -a]
• blog post

firefox/export_firefox_cookies.py

• This script extracts cookies from Firefox’s cookies.sqlite that are specific to a given host. The exported cookies are saved in cookies.txt. New! It also exports session cookies from Firefox’s recovery.js file.
  The exported cookies are saved to session_cookies.txt.
• The original script was written by Dirk Sohler.
• Usage: export_firefox_cookies.py <host>
• blog post

mouse/mousepos_gui.py

• Monitor the mouse position in real-time.
• It only worked for me under Python 2!
• I made it to facilitate the usage of autopy (http://www.autopy.org). Autopy has a Python 3 port here.
• Usage: mousepos_gui.py
• blog post

radio/radio.py

• A minimalistic radio player.
• Available stations: Slay Radio, goa, trance, chillout, etc.
• Usage: radio.py

replace_accents/replace_latex_accents.pl

• This script allows you to write special Hungarian and French characters in a simple way
  (using the ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) charset), then convert them to their LaTeX-equivalents.
• Example: La’szlo’ => L’{a}szl’{o}
• blog post

replace_accents/replace_french_accents_to_latex.pl

• This script converts a French accented text to LaTeX replacing the funny characters with their LaTeX equivalents.
• Example: é => '{e}
• blog post

alarm.py

• A simple alarm script that plays a list of MP3s at a given time.
  Very useful if you leave your computer switched on during the night.
• Usage:

$ alarm -p
    Play music first to adjust volume.
$ alarm -t 7h5
    Set alarm time (5 past 7 in this example).

• blog post

cb.py

• Print the content of the clipboard to the standard output.
• Usage: cb.py

fftabs.py

• A command line program for manipulating Firefox tabs.
• Requirements: Firefox + MozRepl add-on.
• Help: fftabs -h

from_base64.py

• Ask a base64 string and convert it back to a normal string (decode).
• Usage: from_base64

get_alap.py

• An interactive program to generate a skeleton source code.
• Supported languages: Python, Go, Java, C, D.
• Usage: get_alap.py

get_images.py

• Extract image links from a web page.
• Usage: get_images URL [URL]... [-l]

get_links.py

• Extract all links from a web page.
• Usage: get_links.py <URL>
• blog post

github_user_email.py

• An interactive program that figures out the email address of a GitHub user.
• Usage: github_user_email.py

here.py and here.sh

• Print just the name of the current directory. For instance, if you are in /home/students/solo, then this script will print just solo.
• here.sh simply prints the output, while here.py, in addition, copies the output to the clipboards.
• Usage: here

img_to_base64.py

• Take an image file and encode it with BASE64. Put the encoded data in an “img” HTML tag.
• Usage: img_to_base64 <image_file>
• blog post

inout.py

• An interactive script for 1) compressing a folder to another directory, and
  2) uncompressing an archive file to a destination directory.
• Rationale: I always forget the order of parameters…
• Usage: inout

is_net_back.py

• Play a sound when the Internet connection is back.
• Usage: is_net_back

myip.py

• My external IP address.
• Usage: myip

ocr.py

• A wrapper script around the Tesseract OCR engine. Convert an image to string.
• Usage: ocr <image_file>

open_in_tabs.py

• Read URLs from the standard input and open them in separated browser tabs.
• Usage: cat url_list.txt | open_in_tabs
• blog post

prettify.py

• Prettify an HTML page, i.e. pretty print its HTML source.
• The script prints the HTML source that is built by BeautifulSoup (BS). Idea: if you want to manipulate a page with BS, analyze the prettified source instead of the original because this is how BS stores it.
• Usage: prettify <URL>
• blog post

prettyjson.py

• Prettify a JSON file.
• Usage: prettyjson ugly.json

py2rtf.py

• Transform a python source file to RTF.
• Usage: py2rtf [-f] hello.py
• Meaning: the output is written to hello.rtf
• blog post

redirect_to.py

• This script tells you where a webpage redirects.
• Usage: redirect_to.py <URL>
• blog post

rep.py

• Repeat a bash command several times.
• Usage: rep <rep> <cmd>
• Example: rep 3 echo hello
• Meaning: print the text “hello” three times.

slogan.py

• Generate some slogans from a keyword.
• Usage: slogan <keyword>

sp.py

• Print the absolute path of a file. If no parameter is passed, show the current path. The name stands for “show path”.
• This is one of my most useful scripts 😃 I use it every day.
• Usage: sp [<filename>]
• blog post

to_base64.py

• Ask a string and convert it to a base64 string (encode).
• Usage: to_base64

to_md5.py

• This scripts reads a text interactively and prints its
  md5-encoded version. The output is a 32-character long
  hexa string.
• Usage: to_md5

to_utf8.py

• Convert a text file to an UTF-8-encoded text. The output is printed to the screen.
• Usage: to_utf8 input.txt

tocb.py

• Copy the text from the standard input to ALL clipboards. Thus, you can use any paste method to insert your text (middle mouse button or Shift+Insert). The name stands for “to clipboard(s)”.
• Usage: cat file.txt | tocb
• Options: with -t you can trim the text first (remove whitespaces from both ends of the text).
• blog post

top10.py

• Show the top 10 largest files in the current directory. Filesizes can be shown in a human-readable format with the -h option.
• Usage: top10 [-h]

twitch2mp3.py

• Grab a twitch video in mp3.
• Usage: twitch2mp3 TWITCH_VIDEO_URL

userpass.py

• Username and password generator.
• Usage: userpass

us.py

• Change spaces to underscores. Pass a string as a parameter OR pass it
  on the standard input.
• Example #1: us "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist.pdf"
• Result #1: How_to_Think_Like_a_Computer_Scientist.pdf
• Example #2: echo "he he" | us
• Result #2: he_he

xml2json.py

• Convert an XML file to JSON.
• This is a wrapper around the excellent xmltodict library.
• Usage: xml2json <input.xml>