Radare2 provides a wide set of a features to automate boring work.
It ranges from the simple sequencing of the commands to the calling scripts/another programs via IPC (Inter-Process Communication), called r2pipe.
As mentioned a few times before there is an ability to sequence commands using `;` semicolon operator.
[0x00404800]> pd 1 ; ao 1
0x00404800 b827e66100 mov eax, 0x61e627 ; "tab"
address: 0x404800
opcode: mov eax, 0x61e627
prefix: 0
bytes: b827e66100
ptr: 0x0061e627
refptr: 0
size: 5
type: mov
esil: 6415911,rax,=
stack: null
family: cpu
[0x00404800]>
It simply runs the second command after finishing the first one, like in a shell.
The second important way to sequence the commands is with a simple pipe `|` ``` ao|grep address ``` Note, the `|` pipe only can pipe output of r2 commands to external (shell) commands, like system programs or builtin shell commands.
There is a similar way to sequence r2 commands, using the backtick operator `` `command` ``. The quoted part will undergo command substitution and the output will be used as an argument of the command line.
For example, we want to see a few bytes of the memory at the address referred to by the 'mov eax, addr' instruction. We can do that without jumping to it, using a sequence of commands:
[0x00404800]> pd 1
0x00404800 b827e66100 mov eax, 0x61e627 ; "tab"
[0x00404800]> ao
address: 0x404800
opcode: mov eax, 0x61e627
prefix: 0
bytes: b827e66100
ptr: 0x0061e627
refptr: 0
size: 5
type: mov
esil: 6415911,rax,=
stack: null
family: cpu
[0x00404800]> ao~ptr[1]
0x0061e627
0
[0x00404800]> px 10 @ `ao~ptr[1]`
- offset - 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 0123456789ABCDEF
0x0061e627 7461 6200 2e69 6e74 6572 tab..inter
[0x00404800]>
And of course it's possible to redirect the output of an r2 command into a file, using the `>` and `>>` commands ``` [0x00404800]> px 10 @ `ao~ptr[1]` > example.txt [0x00404800]> px 10 @ `ao~ptr[1]` >> example.txt ```
Radare2 also provides quite a few Unix type file processing commands like head, tail, cat, grep and many more. One such command is [Uniq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniq), which can be used to filter a file to display only non-duplicate content. So to make a new file with only unique strings, you can do: ``` [0x00404800]> uniq file > uniq_file ```
The head[1] command can be used to see the first N number of lines in the file, similarly tail[2] command allows the last N number of lines to be seen.
[0x00404800]> head 3 foodtypes.txt 1 Protein 2 Carbohydrate 3 Fat [0x00404800]> tail 2 foodtypes.txt 3 Shake 4 Milk
The [join](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_%28Unix%29) command could be used to merge two different files with common first field. ``` [0x00404800]> cat foodtypes.txt 1 Protein 2 Carbohydrate 3 Fat [0x00404800]> cat foods.txt 1 Cheese 2 Potato 3 Butter [0x00404800]> join foodtypes foods.txt 1 Protein Cheese 2 Carbohydrate Potato 3 Fat Butter ```
Similarly, sorting the content is also possible with the sort[1] command. A typical example could be:
[0x00404800]> sort file eleven five five great one one radare
The `?$?` command describes several helpful variables you can use to do similar actions even more easily, like the `$v` "immediate value" variable, or the `$m` opcode memory reference variable.