CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbash
daniel
daniel

Reputation: 1416

Limit output of all Linux commands

I'm looking for a way to limit the amount of output produced by all command line programs in Linux, and preferably tell me when it is limited.

I'm working over a server which has a lag on the display. Occasionally I will accidentally run a command which outputs a large amount of text to the terminal, such as cat on a large file or ls on a directory with many files. I then have to wait a while for all the output to be printed to the terminal.

So is there a way to automatically pipe all output into a command like head or wc to prevent too much output having to be printed to terminal?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 5171

Answers (5)

Jokester
Jokester

Reputation: 5617

this makes me think of bash-completion.

As complete command in bash enables you to specify handler when a program is not found,

what about write your own handler and clear $PATH, in order to execute every command with redirection to a filtering pipe?

#Did not try it myself.

Upvotes: 1

Basile Starynkevitch
Basile Starynkevitch

Reputation: 1

Perhaps using screen could help?

Upvotes: 1

jaypal singh
jaypal singh

Reputation: 77135

Making aliases of all your commands would be a good start. Something like 

alias lm="ls -al | more"
alias cam="cat $@ | more"

Upvotes: 1

sashang
sashang

Reputation: 12214

Assuming you're working over a network connection, like ssh, into a remote server then try piping the output of the command to less. That way you can manage and navigate the output from the program on the server better. Use 'j' and 'k' to move up and down per line and 'ctrl-u' and 'ctrl-d' to move 1/2 a page up and down. When you do this only the relevant text (i.e. what fits on the screen) will be transmitted over the network.

Upvotes: 0

andrewdotnich
andrewdotnich

Reputation: 16804

I don't know about the general case, but for each well-known command (cat, ls, find?) you could do the following:

  • hardlink a copy to the existing utility
  • write a tiny bash function that calls the utility and pipes to head (or wc, or whatever)
  • alias the name of the utility to call your function.

So along these lines (utterly untested):

$ ln `which cat` ~/bin/old_cat

function trunc_cat () {
   `old_cat $@ | head -n 100`
}

alias cat=trunc_cat

Upvotes: 3

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