It redirects stdin into arguments of a command — In the world of Linux, there is a commonly used tool called xargs. Simply put, it can redirect standard input (stdin) into another command’s arguments. This is super useful when you handle pipelines but some commands can’t receive stdin. For example, the following command can’t print anything: date | echo …

A small feature can make your life much easier — Bash has a special mechanism called expansion, which gives us much convenience. So we can use some notations to write a short command that will be expanded into something complex before being executed. For example, with the help of brace expansion, it’s easy to generate 12 files each for one…

Leveraging the power of this small feature — The usage of wildcards on Linux is a good example of how leveraging a small feature skillfully can make our lives easier. For instance, if we have downloaded a large video file that was split into lots of small chunks. What is the easiest way to merge them back into…

Redirecting the stdout, stderr and stdin like a guru — Yesterday, my colleague asked me a very interesting question about a Linux script she found on our server: What does the following line of command mean? date >> daily_log.txt 2>&1 I smiled and kindly told her the details as always. 🙂 This is about the redirection of standard output and…

A hacker’s way to transfer files between phones and laptops — If you followed me long enough, you probably know I’m using a Mac Mini but an Android phone. There is no convenient way as AirDrop to transfer files between my phone and my computer. And I’m unfortunately too lazy to find other third-party applications to do it. However, as a…

Without any GUI tools of course — On your browser, to find a specific string on a webpage, all you need to know is the “CTRL+F” trick. But as a backend or DevOps engineer, you have to handle something only on a Linux terminal instead of GUI tools. Life is not fair, is it? But don’t worry…

You don’t need to download Postman at all — Trying some APIs is a common operation for software developers. Postman is a famous GUI tool for this purpose. However, life is not always easy, is it? You probably cannot use a pretty GUI tool in some scenarios. To list a few: You are using a remote Linux server and…

The trade-off between security and convenience — Servers on AWS provide certain levels of security for users. That’s great. But too many security concerns may cause your daily operations less convenient. A good example is that you need to provide the correct key file (a file with a .pem …

Saving you from typing and bugs — Mastering some Linux skills can make your life much easier, especially when you are a backend or DevOps developer. The brace expansion, which is a mechanism in Linux by which arbitrary strings may be generated, is a good example. It’s not hard to master it and it may save you…