If you want to practice or gain some skills, have fun solving command-line . You will solve a mystery while applying your command line knowledge to get clues and insights. The Command Line Murders Spoiler Alert: Below is my walkthrough of the game. Try to do it on your own first. If you are stuck, at some point, try the hints that the game itself provides. Getting some CLUES Reading the file, our starting point is to look for the on the instructions CLUES crimescene Looking for clues we found the following 3: grep -n "CLUE" crimescene
9213:CLUE: Footage from an ATM security camera is blurry but shows that the perpetrator is a tall male, at least 6'.
9370:CLUE: Found a wallet believed to belong to the killer: no ID, just loose change, and membership cards for AAA, Delta SkyMiles, the local library, and the Museum of Bash History. The cards are totally untraceable and have no name, for some reason.
11002:CLUE: Questioned the barista at the local coffee shop. He said a woman left right before they heard the shots. The name on her latte was Annabel, she had blond spiky hair and a New Zealand accent. At this moment the more promising seems to be , we have a name, let’s dig into the ’s file. CLUE#11002 people Looking for Annabel We got 2 female Annabels on the file: people grep "Annabel" people| grep "\tF\t"
Annabel Sun	F	26	Hart Place, line 40
Annabel Church	F	38	Buckingham Place, line 179 Looking at the address of these two Annabels we get the info: sed -n "40p" streets/Hart_Place
SEE INTERVIEW #47246024

sed -n "179p" streets/Buckingham_Place
SEE INTERVIEW #699607 Checking Interviews cat interviews/interview-47246024
Ms. Sun has brown hair and is not from New Zealand.  Not the witness from the cafe. Dead end from 47246024, fortunately, the other interview gets us one step further: cat interviews/interview-699607
Interviewed Ms. Church at 2:04 pm.  Witness stated that she did not see anyone she could identify as the shooter, that she ran away as soon as the shots were fired.

However, she reports seeing the car that fled the scene.  Describes it as a blue Honda, with a license plate that starts with "L337" and ends with "9" Searching License Plate We are looking for a vehicle and we know it's a Honda, Blue with license L337??9, so we can filter the following: cat vehicles|tr "\n" " "|sed 's/License/\n&/g'|grep Honda|grep Blue|grep -n -e  "L337..9"
6:License Plate L337QE9 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Erika Owens Height: 6'5" Weight: 220 lbs
18:License Plate L337539 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Aron Pilhofer Height: 5'3" Weight: 198 lbs
26:License Plate L337369 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Heather Billings Height: 5'2" Weight: 244 lbs
28:License Plate L337DV9 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Joe Germuska Height: 6'2" Weight: 164 lbs
36:License Plate L3375A9 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Jeremy Bowers Height: 6'1" Weight: 204 lbs
40:License Plate L337WR9 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Jacqui Maher Height: 6'2" Weight: 130 lbs The command chain used here is a bit more elaborated, I first remove all new lines with tr "\n" " " and then insert a new line before each License word with sed 's/License/\n&/g' So that we get all the info about a License Plate in one line, and can filter with ease From we know the suspect is a tall male, so we can reduce to lines 28 and 36. CLUE #9213 Checking Memberships We check the two suspects to see their memberships, that we have from . CLUE#9370 For Joe Germuska we only have 2 of 4 memberships mentioned: grep "Joe Germuska" -n  memberships/*
memberships/AAA:197:Joe Germuska
memberships/Terminal_City_Library:241:Joe Germuska But with Jeremy Bowers, it appears that we got our killer: grep "Jeremy Bowers" -n memberships/*
memberships/AAA:336:Jeremy Bowers
memberships/Delta_SkyMiles:1153:Jeremy Bowers
memberships/Museum_of_Bash_History:187:Jeremy Bowers
memberships/Terminal_City_Library:531:Jeremy Bowers Checking the Result To check the result we look at the file: solution echo "Jeremy Bowers"| $(command -v md5 || command -v md5sum) | grep -qif /dev/stdin encoded && echo CORRECT\! GREAT WORK, GUMSHOE. || echo SORRY, TRY AGAIN.
CORRECT! GREAT WORK, GUMSHOE. Final thoughts Playing The Command Line Murders has been a very enjoyable experience. Not only did I have a great time solving the mysterious murder following the clues and helping the CLPD, but I also had the opportunity to strengthen my command line skills in a creative way. shouts to Noah Veltman the creator.

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Journey Through the Command Line Murders

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