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Explain shell

explainshell.com

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Re: Explain shell

#21

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #19
svnpenn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 1 year is reasonable, that guy is a dick

No no, it's customary on HN to link to previous discussions because they're interesting to look at! Linking to a previous submission with no comments is frowned upon, but a big past discussion is a generous offer. People sometimes think we (moderators) are being jerks when we post such links as well. I'm a bit puzzled about what to do about that. It's tedious to post "because it might be interesting" every time. (p.s…

[deleted]

Re: Explain shell

#22

Post by reilly3000 »

Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes.

I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

Re: Explain shell

#23

Post by Viperus »

dang wrote: post #18
_they wrote: post #3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834791

Yup and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13989215 , from 2017.

If you really want to know how many time it has been posted, HN links to "from" tab when you click the site in the parentheses instead of the title: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=explainshell.com

Re: Explain shell

#24

Post by BossingAround »

Explain shell is something that has helped me a lot, but the situation of needing it left me baffled for so long... Why can't I search by command + flag? For example, I know what command A does, but I'm not sure what flag C means. I can search for man A, but why can't I search man A --flag C to get only the relevan portion of the manpage?

This has baffled me for years. I'd have guessed that discoverability and documentation would be a core functionality and focus of open source developers.

Also, if I find a command which flag is not explained by explain shell, is there some source I can create PR to? Some DB, where I could propose the addition..?

Re: Explain shell

#25

Post by PurpleRamen »

reilly3000 wrote: post #22

Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes. I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

You define a function named :, which calls iself and goes in the background. Then you call : at the end and start the neverending chain of :-calls till your memory bleeds.

Re: Explain shell

#26

Post by emj »

BossingAround wrote: post #24

Explain shell is something that has helped me a lot, but the situation of needing it left me baffled for so long... Why can't I search by command + flag? For example, I know what command A does, but I'm not sure what flag C means. I can search for man A, but why can't I search man A --flag C to get only the relevan portion of the manpage? This has baffled me for years. I'd have guessed that discoverability and docume…

The terminal was not built for that kind of automatic lookup, and I often find that options are only interesting in their contexts, so while it might in many cases be possible to show the docs for one option only I think you would have to write a man pages in a different style to make that really usefull. The best place for you to create a PR is against the original program, it says on Explainshell that everything is built upon the original man pages, or maybe you can create some kind of new service like http://www.bashoneliners.com https://www.commandlinefu.com to add your own documentation for random commands and options..

That said good documentation is a hard problem, what to document, how to do it, and what use it will have down the line. Your goal is not everyone elses goal, I always come to the problem from the other side: "I need this extra thing from this command, do I need to code somehting custom or is there something that can do it for me". So it's mostly a question of refrasing problems that fit the tools I have rather than looking up what one option does.

Re: Explain shell

#27

Post by lebanon_tn »

reilly3000 wrote: post #22

Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes. I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

Not quite wiki (you have to create your own notes) but you may find this utility helpful: https://github.com/sinclairtarget/um

Re: Explain shell

#28

Post by taneq »

reilly3000 wrote: post #22

Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes. I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

It's a classic "fork bomb": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb

Re: Explain shell

#29

Post by andai »

reilly3000 wrote: post #22

Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes. I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

You have gazed upon the smileyface of doom.

Also, that does sound great.

Re: Explain shell

#30

Post by rezahandzalah »

dang wrote: post #17
rezahandzalah wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, how long is it until it's okay to post a duplicate?

That's a frequently asked question! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Thank you.

> If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok.

I was embarrassed it's in there and expected a definitive rule. Now I'm not feeling that bad ;)

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