GREP_COLORS – change the colors in the GREP output.

Today we will look at the variable GREP_COLORS. This variable determines the colour that is used with the grep command. You can look at the man page of the grep command to see what the various options mean. Here is the excerpt from the man command:

GREP_COLORS

          Specifies the colors and other attributes used to highlight various  parts  of  the
          output.   Its  value  is  a  colon-separated  list of capabilities that defaults to
          ms=01;31:mc=01;31:sl=:cx=:fn=35:ln=32:bn=32:se=36  with  the  rv  and  ne   boolean
          capabilities omitted (i.e., false).  Supported capabilities are as follows.

          sl=    SGR  <a class="zem_slink" title="Substring" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substring" rel="wikipedia">substring</a>  for  whole  selected lines (i.e., matching lines when the -v
                 command-line option is omitted, or non-matching lines when -v is specified).
                 If however the boolean rv capability and the -v command-line option are both
                 specified, it applies to context matching lines  instead.   The  <a class="zem_slink" title="Default (finance)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_%28finance%29" rel="wikipedia">default</a>  is
                 empty (i.e., the terminal's default color pair).

          cx=    SGR  substring for whole context lines (i.e., non-matching lines when the -v
                 command-line option is omitted, or matching lines when -v is specified).  If
                 however  the  boolean  rv capability and the -v command-line option are both
                 specified, it applies to selected non-matching lines instead.   The  default
                 is empty (i.e., the terminal's default color pair).

          rv     <a class="zem_slink" title="Boolean data type" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_data_type" rel="wikipedia">Boolean  value</a>  that  reverses  (swaps)  the  meanings  of  the  sl= and cx=
                 capabilities when the -v command-line option is specified.  The  default  is
                 false (i.e., the capability is omitted).

          mt=01;31
                 SGR  substring  for  matching  <a class="zem_slink" title="Empty set" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_set" rel="wikipedia">non-empty</a>  text in any matching line (i.e., a
                 selected line when the -v command-line option is omitted, or a context  line
                 when  -v  is specified).  Setting this is equivalent to setting both ms= and
                 mc= at once to the same value.  The default is a bold  red  text  foreground
                 over the current line background.

          ms=01;31
                 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a selected line.  (This is only
                 used when the -v command-line option is omitted.)  The effect of the sl= (or
                 cx=  if  rv) capability remains active when this kicks in.  The default is a
                 bold red text foreground over the current line background.

          mc=01;31
                 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a context line.  (This is  only
                 used  when  the -v command-line option is specified.)  The effect of the cx=
                 (or sl= if rv) capability remains active when this kicks in.  The default is
                 a bold red text foreground over the current line background.

          fn=35  SGR  substring  for file names prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 magenta text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          ln=32  SGR substring for <a class="zem_slink" title="Line number" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_number" rel="wikipedia">line numbers</a> prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 green text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          bn=32  SGR substring for byte offsets prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 green text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          se=36  SGR substring for separators that are inserted between selected line  fields
                 (:),  between context line fields, (-), and between groups of adjacent lines
                 when nonzero context  is  specified  (--).   The  default  is  a  cyan  text
                 foreground over the terminal's default background.

          ne     Boolean  value that prevents clearing to the <a class="zem_slink" title="Newline" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline" rel="wikipedia">end of line</a> using Erase in Line
                 (EL) to Right (\33[K) each time a colorized item ends.  This  is  needed  on
                 terminals on which EL is not supported.  It is otherwise useful on terminals
                 for which the back_color_erase (bce) boolean terminfo  capability  does  not
                 apply,  when  the  chosen  highlight colors do not affect the background, or
                 when EL is too slow or causes too much flicker.  The default is false (i.e.,
                 the capability is omitted).

Delete all but some directories

I think, like me, you would have faced a lot of situations, where you wanted to delete all the files or directories in a location, leaving only the required files/directories. So, I have a directory containing lots of files/directories and I want to delete most of them except some 5/10 of them, how to I do it.

I finally wrote a small script to do that. First save list of files that you do not want to delete in file called “listnames” and then execute the below script. This will give you the rm commands that you need to execute. If you want you can execute the rm command from the script, but to be able to review, I just have the commands echoed.

cksum – compare for multiple files.

If you have to compare cksum for couple of files, the you know how cumbersome it is. So, I wrote a simple script, wherein you can create a file called cksums in the current directory and copy paste the result of  “**cksums ***”  into this file, and then run this script. Cool 🙂

#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE: checkcksums.sh
#
#         USAGE: ./checkcksums.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION: Compare cksums of multiple files.
#
#       OPTIONS: ---
#  REQUIREMENTS: ---
#          BUGS: ---
#         NOTES: ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (),
#  ORGANIZATION:
#       CREATED: 02/22/2013 09:12:17 PM IST
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

file=cksums
while read line
do
    a=( $(echo $line) )
    if [[ -f ${a[2]} ]]
    then
        b=( $(cksum ${a[2]}) )
        if [[ $a == $b ]]
        then
            echo "Cksum for ${a[2]} = ${a[0]} matches"
        else
            echo "Failed ::Cksum for ${a[2]} = ${a[0]} matches"
        fi
    else
        echo "Failed :: file ${a[2]} does not exist"
    fi
done < $file

Related articles

• pycksum 0.4.0
• Checking if files are different using cmp
• Alternative to MD5 hash?

vim mappings for multiple files.

If you open multiple files in vim with command line option. Then the only way to move between the files is “:n” and “:N”. There is a easier way to do this. Just add mappings for this in vimrc. Here is what you can use.

map  :N
map  :n

And if you want to make sure that you move to the prev or next file after saving the file, then you modifyt the mapping like this:

symlinks -delete all invalid soft links in Linux/Fedora

First of all, install symlinks if it is not installed :

sudo yum install symlinks

and here is the description:

Description : The symlinks utility performs maintenance on symbolic links.

Symlinks checks for symlink problems, including dangling symlinks

which point to nonexistent files.  Symlinks can also automatically

convert absolute symlinks to relative symlinks.

Install the symlinks package if you need a program for maintaining

symlinks on your system.

and the help for the same:

pigz -parallel gzip

Here is a short description of pigz:

pigz, which stands for parallel implementation of gzip,
is a fully functional replacement for gzip that exploits
multiple processors and multiple cores to the hilt when compressing data.

And for the installation:

sudo yum install pigz

With pigz, if you don’t have many things running on your multi processor machine then you will see a significant improvement when you are gzipping the files.

conky script used to monitor server status remotely.

[][1]

I was looking for something to monitor few details on the server. I thought about quite a lot of applications, some open source and some scripts developed in house. But my requirements were quite petty and the scripts and applications were quite heavy. So, I thought why not conky :).

So, with some quick work on conky script, I was able to get what I wanted and here it is for all of you.