Become Shell Literate

Post by oblio » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:00 PM UTC

sixstringtheory wrote: post #321

oblio wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man page, the information you're probably looking for is frontloaded. Just scroll to the bottom if you want examples? This is false for most tools we don't use daily. It's false even for tools we do use daily, in some cases (I have to google git commands every month or so for commands I use rarely). Most people are and remain perpetual intermediates:…

I bristled just now at the opportunity to have my first strong disagreement with Mr. Spolsky. Then I read the article you linked. I don’t think it means what you think it means. He’s talking about users of the software, not developers. And I know, I know, developers are users of software too, perhaps more than the average user. But then he links to this article about homo logicus [0] in which he begins: > Of all the…

Post by GoblinSlayer » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #80

combatentropy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. I often think the man page should begin with a few examples, then launch into the neverending list of options. That is no way to learn. In foreign language 101, they start you off with a small group of examples. "Como estas?" "Muy bien. Y tu?" Afterward, they explain the rules of the language (this is a noun, this is a verb, this is how you conjugate for first-person singular, etc.). In fact, this is ho…

>The Linux man pages are upside down. Examples don't come till the very end, if at all. You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man page, the information you're probably looking for is frontloaded. Just scroll to the bottom if you want examples?

Post by GoblinSlayer » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #234

porknubbins wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought someday I would become a hardcore Linux hacker and know all the commands and flags but the reality is I have to relearn every time. Who spends that much time just in the command line these days? I’m sure some people do but I don’t know what they do unless its CTFs or security related.

Devops-style workload means a lot of the time spent in the console. Even then, I lookup the quoting difference between $* and $@ every single time, and how to use `read`. Or more likely decide it's time to drop bash at that point...

Post by patrec » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

patrec wrote: post #312

gray_-_wolf wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now you require gnu awk, it no longer works under posix (so for example busybox). Which sucks a bit.

It'll work with more than gawk (e.g. mawk as well) but yeah, it will not work with busybox awk. In the context of an interactive shell command I doubt many people care much about posix; indeed I struggle to recall any context in which I ever cared about posix compliance as such. Unless you have an personal or professional interest in fringe operating systems posix compliance is mostly of interest as an imperfect prox…

    git status -s | awk 'gsub(/^ D /,"")' | tr \\n \\0 | ...

Post by lenkite » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

cjohnson318 wrote: post #257

voidhorse wrote: post #238

I used to think this way as well, but out of necessity, had to work specifically with a commercial IDE for some time. Turns out, if you are confident learning the keybindings of a robust IDE is worthwhile (e.g. you know that you must use it for some particular project for a decent amount of time) the investment pays off just as well as learning shell commands. A good IDE can do everything a cobbled together shell pip…

If you work with mechanical or electrical engineers, then you're going to run into Windows machines pretty quick, and then you need to convince them to install minGW to run your shell scripts. Sure, shell scripts are portable between Mac and *nix, but you're leaving out a large elephant.