3 ms·

It depends a lot on from which angle you want to understand it. There's a difference between "understanding the variety of command line options" vs. "understand

• kqr 10y ago
  I'm hoping that by understanding the meaning of the raw data structures, I can ask much more educated questions when I am faced with a new operation I want to perform using GnuPG. The idea is that instead of asking myself "what happens if I set a new, future expiration date on a revoked key?" with no clear answer, I could just think in terms of (e.g., I have no idea how it really works) "since the expiration date is set as an optional header extension to the key data structure, and the revocation bit is maintained in the mandatory header, the revocation bit takes precedence over any other extension headers, including the new expiry date I accidentally set." This way, knowing the raw data structures makes it easier for me to figure out which command line arguments I want, if you will.
  • kazinator 10y ago
    That's like saying that if I understand the layout of the Ext4 filesystem, I can ask much more educated questions about how to write shell scripts or other kinds of programs to manipulate files in various ways.