Linux – How to use the ul command line utility

command lineterminalutil-linuxUtilities

I wanted to answer Use _roff to underline words with "just use ul, this command is meant specifically for underlining text", however I just can't grasp how to use it. I thought

$ echo "hello _kitty_ world" > /tmp/foo.txt
$ ul /tmp/foo.txt

would give me an underlined "kitty", however it doesn't. What am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

The input format requires character-backspace-underscore or character-backspace-letter to underline a character. You also get boldface with character-backspace-character.

echo $'hello k\b_i\b_t\b_t\b_y\b_ world' | ul

Less does a similar transformation automatically.

Related Solutions

Command line utility to read vCalendar files

I just googled and found vcal, a perl script for displaying vcal files. According to the man page it should do exactly what you need.

There is also gcalcli a command line interface for google calendar which allows you to manage your google calendar. This may allow you to add events you received directly to your existing calendar.

Bash – Command line method to find repeat-word typos, with line numbers

Edited: added install and demo

You need to take care of at least some edge cases, like

repeated words at the end (and beginning) of the line.
search should be case insensitive, because of frequent errors like The the apple.
probably you want to restrict search only to word constituent to not match something like ( ( a + b) + c ) (repeated opening parentheses.
only full words should match to eliminate the thesis
When it comes to human language Unicode characters inside words should properly interpreted

All in all I recommend pcregrep solution:

pcregrep -Min --color=auto '\b([^[:space:]]+)[[:space:]]+\1\b' file

Obviously color and line number (n option) is optional, but usually nice to have.

Install

On Debian-based distributions you can install via:

$ sudo apt-get install pcregrep

Example

Run the command on jefferson_typo.txt to see:

$ pcregrep -Min --color=auto '\b([^[:space:]]+)[[:space:]]+\1\b' jefferson_typo.txt
1:He has has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary
3:He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
5:Assent should be be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly

The above is just a text capture, but on a color-supported terminal, matches are colorized:

has has
and
and
be be