When using the Linux command line and related tools, there are many useful tricks and common practices worth noting. In this post, I’m keeping a running list of tips related to Linux command-line tools for future reference.

Table of Contents

• Command Line
• Cd
• Git
  • Branch
• Grep
• Ps
• Objdump
• Echo

Command Line

• ctrl-A moves cursor to the beginning of line.
• ctrl-E moves cursor to the end of the line.
• ctrl-U cuts everything from cursor to beginning of the line.
• ctrl-K cuts everything from cursor to end of the line.
• ctrl-Y yanks the last cut text.
• !! runs the previous command.

Cd

• cd - moves back to the previous directory.
• pushd <path> moves to the path and save the current directory.
  • popd to return to the saved directory.

Git

Branch

• In case of ambiguity between file names and branch names (e.g. when both a file and a branch are named as object).
  • git checkout object -- to checkout branch.
  • git checkout -- object to checkout file.

Grep

• -n displays line numbers.
• -c displays just the total number of matching lines.

Ps

• ps auxwf
  • a shows processes for all users.
  • u shows the user/owner of each process.
  • x shows processes not attached to a terminal.
  • w shows wide output (to include the entire command line).
  • f shows processes in a tree format.

Objdump

• -z shows all symbols (to include those with zero values).
• To perform objdump on arm binary,
  • For bare-metal, install binutils-arm-none-eabi, and use arm-none-eabi-objdump.
  • For arm64, install binutils-aarch64-linux-gnu, and use aarch64-linux-gnu-objdump.

Echo

• echo $? displays the return value of the most recently run program.