Linux tips and tricks (2), 15/07/10, Shen Ting's URSS Blog

July 15, 2010

Say you are on a network computer and wish to know the system specs. You can use:

cat /proc/cpuinfo
cat /proc/meminfo

Which will return you information about the CPU and memory in the system. There are more files in /proc which will give you information.

Searching for number of instances of a string in a file:

e.g. grep 'Y =' *log|wc (to search for the string 'Y =' in all files ending with log. wc gives word count)

Clearing a file. Recall the standard output operator. Now use:

cat /dev/null > test2.log

You don’t need to cat /dev/null into a file to empty it, you can just use >
For example:

me@mine:/tmp> echo hello > world
me@mine:/tmp> cat world
hello
me@mine:/tmp> >world
me@mine:/tmp> cat world
me@mine:/tmp>

16 Jul 2010, 12:20

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Thanks a lot! That does seem to work better! by on this entry
You don't need to cat /dev/null into a file to empty it, you can just use > For example: me@mine:/tm… by Mike Willis on this entry

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