Linux commands reference — search 70 shell commands by task

How to use the Linux commands reference

1. Type in Filter: a command name (tar), or a word about the job (log, permissions, listening). Every word you type must appear somewhere in the row.
2. Pick a Topic to narrow further: Files, Permissions, Text, Processes, Network, Archives, System or Packages. Leave it on All topics to search everything.
3. Read the Example column and copy the one closest to what you need. Change paths, hosts and process IDs before running it.
4. The counter shows how many rows match, for example “Showing: 8 of 70 commands”.

What it does and when to use it

This is a quick lookup for the commands you use often but do not type every day. It helps when you remember the task (“follow a growing log”, “who is using port 3000”) but not the command or the flag. The 70 rows cover files (13), text processing (16), networking (12), processes and services (10), system information (10), permissions (4), archives (3) and package managers (2).

Examples are real-world rather than bare syntax, such as du -sh * | sort -h to find what fills a folder.

For Git there is a separate Git cheatsheet. To work out a permission number such as 755, use the chmod calculator, and to check a schedule before you save it with crontab -e, paste it into the cron expression parser.

How it works

The command list ships with the page and loads the first time you use the tool. Filtering runs in your browser: the text is split into words, and a row is kept only if every word appears (case-insensitive) in its command, purpose, example or topic. The topic menu then removes rows from other topics. Nothing is sent to a server, and the tool never runs a command; it only shows text.

Worked examples

Searching port:

Showing: 3 of 70 commands
lsof | List open files and ports. | sudo lsof -i :3000 | Processes
ss | Show sockets and listening ports. | ss -tulpn | Network
env / export | Show or set environment variables. | export NODE_ENV=production | System

The third row shows the substring rule at work: “port” sits inside “export”.

Topic Archives with an empty filter returns three rows, tar, zip / unzip and gzip / gunzip. The tar example creates and then extracts an archive: tar -czf backup.tar.gz dir/ ; tar -xzf backup.tar.gz.

Searching space returns a single row: df | Free space on mounted filesystems. | df -h | System.

Limits and tips

• Read before you paste. Examples such as rm -i *.log, sed -i 's/foo/bar/g' file.txt and rsync --delete change or remove files. The tool does not check whether a command is safe on your system.
• Distribution differences. apt is for Debian and Ubuntu, dnf for Fedora and RHEL. Other systems (Alpine’s apk, Arch’s pacman) are not listed.
• Some tools need installing. jq, rsync, dig and traceroute are often missing from minimal images.
• One example per command. For every option, run man rsync (or the command you need).