Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#1

Post by aaasen » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 3:11 PM UTC

Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal
aasen.in

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#2

Post by Argorak » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

I highly recommend the debian bug tracker on `sl`:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614158

Also, for those that love their cars "pre-tuned by german engineers", there is `gti`:

http://r-wos.org/hacks/gti

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#3

Post by frankblizzard » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

first saw this thing around 12 years ago on an AS/400 terminal. Our neckbearded Lead Programmer was supposed to have programmed it in RPG but probably this thing is even older?

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#4

Post by gee_totes » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

I've always wondered: why is it a locomotive? Why not a penguin or something else?

Just thinking aloud here: ls stands for 'list'.... so sl stands for 'tsil'.... which is a model of a train? No, that's not it.

I think there's a missing part to this joke.

[edit] Just stepped away from my desk and took two steps and figured it out: sl = steam locomotive

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#5

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

gee_totes wrote: post #4

I've always wondered: why is it a locomotive? Why not a penguin or something else? Just thinking aloud here: ls stands for 'list'.... so sl stands for 'tsil'.... which is a model of a train? No, that's not it. I think there's a missing part to this joke. [edit] Just stepped away from my desk and took two steps and figured it out: sl = steam locomotive

[deleted]

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#6

Post by Oompa » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

I added this to Homebrew years ago, for those OS X users.

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#7

Post by Blahah » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:15 PM UTC

When a colleague accidentally types their password to our cluster into a chat window, the first thing I do is login as them and alias ls=sl. Another fun one is to add `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl` to their .bashrc, so on login they get to watch ascii star wars.

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#8

Post by benhalllondon » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

Great, excellent, fun.

But, clearly, it should run 'ls' after doing its choo choo?

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#9

Post by Argorak » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

frankblizzard wrote: post #3

first saw this thing around 12 years ago on an AS/400 terminal. Our neckbearded Lead Programmer was supposed to have programmed it in RPG but probably this thing is even older?

The source downloaded from the authors page[1] lists the following modification times:

    [ skade sl ] ls -la *
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff  331 Jul 22  1998 Makefile
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff  417 Jul 22  1998 README
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff  689 Jan 18  1994 sl.1
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff 7.0K Jul 22  1998 sl.c
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff 4.1K Jan 18  1994 sl.h
    -rw-r--r-- 1 skade staff  980 Jan 18  1994 sl.txt

So, it is almost 20 years old.

[1] http://www.tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~toyoda/index_e.html

Re: Sl: a steam locomotive in your terminal

#10

Post by jurre » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

gee_totes wrote: post #4

I've always wondered: why is it a locomotive? Why not a penguin or something else? Just thinking aloud here: ls stands for 'list'.... so sl stands for 'tsil'.... which is a model of a train? No, that's not it. I think there's a missing part to this joke. [edit] Just stepped away from my desk and took two steps and figured it out: sl = steam locomotive

sl, steam locomotive.