Live data from Hacker News

Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

dt.plumbing

11–20 of 162 posts

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#11
post #6

[flagged]

> During World War II, Revolite (then a division of Johnson & Johnson) developed an adhesive tape made from a rubber-based adhesive applied to a durable duck cloth backing. This tape resisted water and was used to seal some ammunition cases during that period.

> "Duck tape" is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as having been in use since 1899 and "duct tape" (described as "perhaps an alteration of earlier duck tape") since 1965.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#13
post #10

I read the page a few times but I'm still scratching my head. How is this intended to be used?

Yeah, the examples are focused on dt’s internal state and features. A few real world practical examples of what you can do with it would be much better.

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#14
post #10

I read the page a few times but I'm still scratching my head. How is this intended to be used?

Presumably it's meant to be used when you're writing a shell script and you have some problem in front of you that would be trivial to solve in a real programming language and you find yourself saying a sentence starting with "I just wanna…" and rage-googling or asking ChatGPT or whatever.

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#15
post #10

I read the page a few times but I'm still scratching my head. How is this intended to be used?

Presumably it's meant to be used when you're writing a shell script and you have some problem in front of you that would be trivial to solve in a real programming language and you find yourself saying a sentence starting with "I just wanna…" and rage-googling or asking ChatGPT or whatever.

Would be great if it could show some things it can do that awk can’t. Because awk is typically my Swiss Army knife if I run into these situations.

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#16
Nushell has filled this void for me. It elevates pipes by structuring them into lists or tables. It has all sorts of goodies for manipulating those data structures like inserting/updating rows and cells, better string interpolation, useful utility functions like case transformation, and more.

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#18

This article links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesta_Stoudt , which links to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_duck , which explains that the word "duck" here comes from the Dutch doek , or "linen canvas".

Yeah which explains that duck tape is not for ducts (or pipes) since it's made of fabric.

> She is often misattributed as the inventor of duct tape. However, numerous variations of adhesive cotton duck tape had existed for decades, nor did she invent the specific formulation of the popularized duct tape.

Re: Dt: Duck tape for your Unix pipes

#20
post #17

Title should be > Dt: Duct tape for your Unix pipes ^^^^

Curiously enough, not really, from the post:

    Excuse me, is it "duct" or "duck" tape?
    I mean sure, "duct tape" and "duck tape" are both fine. "Duct tape" is the more common name today. The older name is "duck tape" after the duck cloth under the adhesive.

    As an aside: If you care about such things, make sure to read up on how today's common version became popular. A 51-year-old woman named Vesta Stoudt, mother of 8, mailed her idea for a better ammunition box seal to the president (who approved production) after her bosses didn't do anything with the suggestion.
Post reply on HN