I believe I understand what the command means, but putting it in simple words is what is getting me. The command I am working on is the following:

Now this is what I have came up with as far as what each thing means in this command:

find = Search for files that meet a desired criteria

-type d = directory

cut = Divide a file into several parts

-f =are separated by a TAB character by default.

1 = parse out column 1

-d/ = ??

uniq = Uniquify files

-c = Print the number of times each line occurred along with the line.

sort = sort text files

-g = Sort numerically, using the standard C function `strtod' to convert a prefix of each line to a double-precision floating point number. - not sure what this means though...

tail -5 = Output the last N (number) lines.

I have ran this command in linux after issuing the
command, and then issued
to get a better understanding of it, to see what it looks like and see what it does. As far as I understand it, it lists off all users within crux and sort order, but a lot of them are Permission Denied so it doesn't exactly do the last 5 lines of a file. So I am definitely confused!!

Anyway someone could help me better understand this? I'd highly appreciate it.

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Also wanted to quickly add that I noticed that when I reran that command in linux that after it scans all users it has 5 lines that are completely different from the rest that it scans through that looks like the following:

628 userid
643 userid
673 userid
826 userid
1706 userid

So I'm assuming that would be the tail part of the command. Am I wrong about this or am I way off? Sheesh, I'm so confused with this command it's not even funny. lol

Think of all before a | as a command and the output of that command is the input to all that follows; and again ...
the -d/ in the cut command sets the field delimiter to /
see man cut
Yes the final 5 lines output come from the tail, but it is the tail of the sorted unique lines.

If you just wanted a fish instead of how to fish;
"list the five users with the most directories in their public_html directory (usually the place for users web pages) in ascending order please, Hal."

Or, simply, "Give me the five users with the most web pages, Hal, in ascending order"

Thanks so much for helping me with this, with you explaining in both posts and then I did the man cut in linux which helped as well. I also look on this site as a reference guide type thing as well: http://www.ss64.com/bash/ it helps from time to time because in some of the commands it gives examples and I try them out on linux which kind of help out on understanding things.

Again I appreciate you helping me out with this one. I think what confuses me is all the | between each command. It throws me a curb ball, and then I get all frustrated.

Now just to make sure I understand this correctly, here's a different but very similiar command:

The only thing different is that it's looking for files and not directories. So it's listing the five users with the most files, right?

Correct. But it is still keying on the public_html directories, and any individual web page could have many or few files. I keep a lot of files on a page that are never sent but only used to generate files that are sent. I suppose it's a valid measure though. Have fun with this stuff; a shell command is a real time saver.

Okay, cool!! Thanks for helping me out. That one was a little tough. I appreciate it!!

I am sure I will be back...

A good way to figure out commands with this many pipes is to divide it up. By this I mean run the command up to the first pipe:Then run the part of the command up to the second pipe, etc:That way you can compare the outputs to see what is going on.

Hmm, I will definitely have to keep that in mind norobro!!! I'm going to give it a shot now to see what happens in linux.