Script Ahoy

Community Resource for Archivists and Librarians Scripting

The command line is powerful but more than a little intimidating. Our community resource is intended to provide helpful one-liners and script code specifically drawn from real-life examples in archives and libraries. Take these, use them in your workflows, change them up, contribute back! Remember: you have to crawl before you walk. (See what we did there with the acronym?)

Each button displays helpful information about how to perform a wide variety of tasks on the command line. To use this site, click on the task you would like to perform. A new window will open up with a sample command and a description of how that command works. You can copy this command and understand how the command works with a breakdown of each of the flags.

Practice more command line wizardry with this Command Line Crash Course from Learn Code the Hard Way.

What do you want to do?

Select from the following.

Copy, rename, and create files

Find and interpret files

Add helpful flags into bash shell scripts

Increase control on the command line