Unix mavens: is there a way for ls on a Mac OS X install to alphabetize its listing case-insensitively, while still preserving any other ls flags you may be using? If not, does another ls variant offered by anybody offer case-insensitivity, and if so, how can I supplant one with the other, without risk of any harm to anything else on my system? (If it matters, my shell of choice is tcsh.)
posted by WCityMike on Aug 16, 2009 - 17 answers

Is there a way that I can access some very old PDF files that are encrypted with a password I cannot remember any longer? I have a system running Mac OS X (Leopard), and I do need to do the decryption myself. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on May 16, 2008 - 12 answers

I would basically like to rip off, wholesale, some command-line script which will provide me a countdown -- only in days. No years, months, minutes, or seconds. Unfortunately, adapting an existing script is beyond my ken. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Sep 27, 2007 - 5 answers

I have Mac OS X, with its Unix underpinnings. I have a number of text files through which I did a search-and-replace. Unfortunately, that altered all of the timestamps on the files. I'm trying to restore things via the "Date Created" info. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Aug 6, 2007 - 12 answers

In need of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enabling/Getting the 'Mail' Unix Command to E-Mail You Stuff, for Complete and Utter Dummies." [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Sep 20, 2006 - 3 answers

My process status command (ps) has stopped working in Mac OS X. Help? [more inside]
posted by jasmeet on Sep 19, 2006 - 17 answers

datascrubbing: I'm using rm -R */*.gif (for example) to get rid of unnecessary files in a directory. There is stuff that's nested about five directories deep that I can't get to using the above command. I'm using the Bash terminal in OS X. specifically, there is a redundant file called "popup" nested in there that I want to get rid of, among others.

Second related problem: is there a way to recursively delete (full) directories, say ones that end in .blob using wildcards? And would I use rmdir or rm -R to do this?

I'm working on a copy of the original, so its ok to experiment a little
posted by mecran01 on Jul 16, 2004 - 18 answers