Explain a Command

A quick way to see what commands and their options do before running them.

Print the largest files or folders in the current dir (including ones starting with a dot)

du -s * .[^.]* | sort -n | tail

du	du(1) estimate file space usage
-s	-s, --summarize display only a total for each argument
* .[^.]*
\|	⇓
sort	sort(1) sort lines of text files
-n	-n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value; see manual for which strings are supported
\|	⇓
tail	tail(1) output the last part of files

Delete files extracted from a tarball
tar -tf file.tar.gz | xargs rm -r

Print the largest files or folders in the current dir
du -s * | sort -n | tail

From our blog:

Want to build something like this? Have a look at ManKier's API.

For another take on explaining commands, check out explainshell.com.