sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n//g' filename.txt > newfilename_oneline.txt

To get average for a column of numbers (here the second column $2):

awk '{ sum += $2; n++ } END { if (n > 0) print sum / n; }'

To get sequence length for all sequences in a fasta file:

awk '/^>/ {if (seqlen){print seqlen}; print ;seqlen=0;next; } { seqlen = seqlen +length($0)}END{print seqlen}' \
filename.fasta

To copy (move, rename, etc) files based on their list in a text file:

cat file_list.txt | while read line; do cp "$line" complete_dataset/"$line"; done

To split bam files into sets with mapped and unmapped reads:

samtools view -F4 sample.bam > sample.mapped.sam
samtools view -f4 sample.bam > sample.unmapped.sam

To gzip all your fastq files using gnu parallel and gzip:

parallel gzip ::: *.fastq

To gzip all your fastq files using pigz:

pigz *.fastq

To count all sequences in a fasta file:

grep "^>" yourfile.fasta -c

To count all sequences in all fasta files in your current directory:

for a in *.fasta; do ls $a; grep "^>" -c $a; done

To keep only one copy of duplicated lines:

awk '!seen[$0]++'

To sum assembly size from SPAdes contigs.fasta or scaffolds.fasta file:

grep "^>" scaffolds.fasta | cut -f 4 -d '_' | paste -sd+ | bc

To remove everything after the first space at each line, e.g. to to simplify fasta headers:

cut -d' ' -f1 < your_file

To count reads in a all .fastq.gz files in your current folder (fast, using gnu parallel):

parallel "echo {} && gunzip -c {} | wc -l | awk '{d=\$1; print d/4;}'" ::: *.gz

To count reads in a all .fastq.gz files in your current folder:

zcat *.gz | echo $((`wc -l`/4))

To count reads in a all .fastq files in your current folder:

cat *.fastq | echo $((`wc -l`/4))

To count base pairs in a all .fastq.gz files in your current folder:

zcat *.fastq.gz | paste - - - - | cut -f 2 | tr -d '\n' | wc -c 

To split multifasta file into many fasta files:

awk '/^>/ {OUT=substr($0,2) ".fa"}; {print >> OUT; close(OUT)}' Input_File

To convert Illumina FASTQ 1.3 to 1.8:

sed -e '4~4y/@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_`abcdefghi/!"#$%&'\''()*+,-.\/0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJ/' f.fastq

To convert FASTQ to FASTA:

sed -n '1~4s/^@/>/p;2~4p' 

To get fastq read length distribution:

cat reads.fastq | awk '{if(NR%4==2) print length($1)}' | sort | uniq -c

To deinterleave interleaved fastq file:

cat myf.fq | paste - - - - - - - - | tee >(cut -f 1-4 | tr "\t" "\n" > myfile_1.fq) | cut -f 5-8 | \
tr "\t" "\n" > myf2.fq 

To filter and sort contig identifiers from SPAdes assembly (e.g. here lenght >= 4000 + coverage >=100):

grep "^>" scaffolds.fasta | sed s"/_/ /"g | awk '{ if ($4 >= 4000 && $6 >= 100) print $0 }' | sort -k 4 -n | \
sed s"/ /_/"g

To append something to all headers of your fasta files:

sed 's/>.*/&YOURSTRING/' filename.fasta > new_filename.fasta

To replace/squeeze multiple adjacent spaces by only one space: 

tr -s " " < file

To filter fastq based on length (here larger than or equal to 21, but smaller than or equal to 25.

cat your.fastq | paste - - - - | awk 'length($2)  >= 21 && length($2) <= 25' | sed 's/\t/\n/g' > filtered.fastq

To print difference between the last and first row in 5th column:

awk '{if (!first){first=$5;}; last=$5;} END {print last-first}' myfile.txt

To sample only 200 first bases from all sequences in a multifasta file (e.g. from assembly scaffolds.fasta file here):

awk '/^>/{ seqlen=0; print; next; } seqlen < 200 { if (seqlen + length($0) > 200) $0 = substr($0, 1, 200-seqlen);\
 seqlen += length($0); print }' scaffolds.fasta > 200bp_scaffolds.fasta

 To pipe a compressed fasta file directly into makeblastdb.

gunzip -c fasta.gz | makeblastdb -in -

To remove sequences with duplicate fasta headers from a fasta file.

awk '/^>/{f=!d[$1];d[$1]=1}f' in.fasta > out.fasta