Beginner command-line tool examples

These examples introduce a few useful command-line tools with simple commands you can try or adapt.

`curl`

Use curl to fetch information from a URL and print it in the terminal.

$ curl https://cheat.sh/tar

Save the downloaded content to a file:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ubc-library-rc/advanced-shell/main/README.md -o README.md

Use wget to download a file from the web.

$ wget https://github.com/ubc-library-rc/advanced-shell/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Choose the name of the saved file:

$ wget https://github.com/ubc-library-rc/advanced-shell/archive/refs/heads/main.zip -O advanced-shell.zip

$ mc ~/Downloads

Use pdftk to split, merge, and rotate PDF files from the terminal.

Combine two PDF files into one file:

$ pdftk first.pdf second.pdf cat output combined.pdf

Extract a few pages from a PDF:

$ pdftk original.pdf cat 1-3 output first-pages.pdf

Rotate all pages clockwise:

$ pdftk original.pdf cat 1-endright output rotated.pdf

Use mplayer to play audio or video files from the terminal.

$ mplayer song.mp3

Play a video file:

$ mplayer video.mp4

Use ffmpeg to convert, trim, or extract information from audio and video files.

Convert a video file from one format to another:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4

Extract the audio from a video:

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 audio.mp3

Create a short clip from a longer video:

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ss 00:00:10 -t 00:00:05 clip.mp4

Use ImageMagick to inspect, resize, and convert image files. On many systems, the command is magick.

Resize an image:

$ magick input.jpg -resize 800x600 output.jpg

Convert an image from one format to another:

$ magick input.png output.jpg

Create a thumbnail:

$ magick input.jpg -thumbnail 200x200 thumbnail.jpg

If your system uses the older ImageMagick command style, replace magick with convert:

$ convert input.png output.jpg